


Losing Sleep

by chiiyo86



Category: Supernatural, Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Crossover, Eichen | Echo House, Gen, Hallucinations, Horror, Insomnia, Mental Institutions, Mystery, Panic Attacks, Sleep Deprivation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-01
Updated: 2016-08-01
Packaged: 2018-07-28 11:31:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 28,988
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7638442
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chiiyo86/pseuds/chiiyo86
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Having been awake for days, tormented by hallucinations of Lucifer, Sam is at the end of his rope. In order to try and help him, Dean drags his brother to a small California town to meet with one of Bobby's contacts. </p><p>But everything isn't what it seems in Beacon Hills, and while Dean tries to unravel the town's mysteries, Sam commits himself to the local mental institution, Eichen House. His roommate, Stiles Stilinski, is a boy with secrets of his own, but Sam and Stiles will have to learn how to work together while struggling against their own demons if they want to survive what lurks in Eichen House.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Originally written for the [sncross_bigbang](http://sncross-bigbang.livejournal.com/) challenge, until it died out before art claims. I decided to finish the story and post it anyway. This fic is an AU for SPN's episode 7.17 "The Born-Again Identity", and for Teen Wolf's 3.20 "Echo House." Thank you to my friend [sevenofspade](http://archiveofourown.org/users/sevenofspade) for her help!
> 
> I should maybe specify that the depiction of Eichen House in this fic being faithful to Teen Wolf canon, it means that it has little to do with actual mental institutions in real life.

“I’m okay,” Sam said, and then coughed into the crook of his elbow. It was an exhausted sound, barely more than a weak expulsion of air. 

“Yeah, you look fine,” Dean said in a drawl. 

He glanced into his rearview mirror for traffic, then back at his brother, whose bruised eyes gave him the air of someone who’d been repeatedly punched in the face. Sam was huddled on as though he was cold, crunched over himself like a wrinkled tissue. He was leaning against the door on his side—Dean was pretty sure it was because it took too much effort for him to sit up straight—and cradling his hurt wrist in his lap like a broken baby bird. 

“How long have you been up again? Three days?”

“Almost four days,” Sam murmured into the fabric of his jacket. 

“How long can someone stay awake before they’re toast? Don’t answer that,” Dean said, even though Sam hadn’t said anything, hadn’t even opened his mouth to speak. 

He felt a restless, jittery sort of energy run through him, maybe from all the coffee he’d drunk. It made him drum his fingers against the wheel and jiggle his left leg; his other leg was busy pressing down on the gas pedal with all his might. He hadn’t put any music on, vaguely hoping that the familiar purr of the Impala would lull Sam to sleep and not wanting to distract him from it, but so far Sam was staying stubbornly awake. Dean could pretend he didn’t know much about sleep deprivation, but in fact he’d googled the shit out of it and learned enough to freak himself out: heart failure, hallucinations, psychosis—a nice laundry list of problems was awaiting his brother. Although with Lucifer roaming inside his brain, Sam was probably halfway there anyway. 

From the corner of his eye he saw Sam startle and wince, but his brother kept his eyes fixed on the road, refusing to give any more acknowledgement to whatever Lucifer had come up with to drive him crazy.

“This guy’s supposed to be good,” Dean said a little too loud, and Sam’s eyes momentarily left the road to give him a sideway glance. 

“Who’s he again?”

“Some sort of druid guy Bobby knew.” A moment of silence floated by; it still didn’t feel right to be talking about Bobby that way, like a thing of the past. “Anyway, I called him, so he’ll be waiting for us.”

“Did he say he could help?”

“Not exactly.” 

The guy had been pretty circumspect, actually, but hadn’t outright said he _couldn’t_ help, and this had been all the encouragement Dean needed to drag their asses across the country. None of the other people he’d called had even hinted at the possibility of help.

At Dean’s answer Sam’s face shut down, shadowed with doubt and the sour edge of something else—likely resignation. They’d been through that dance before, with Sam acting all gloom and doom and Dean wrestling fucking windmills with the power of positive thinking. He was a goddamn optimist, in a way, even if life had done its damnest to beat it out of him. Not the enthusiastic kind, mind you; more like the grit-your-teeth-and-keep-going kind, but it got wearing after a while to always be the one who clung to the hope that they could get to the proverbial light at the end of the tunnel. It gave him a jolt to see that look on his brother’s face again, and he nudged him in the ribs. None too gently, it seemed, because Sam winced. Lack of sleep made him brittle and sensitive, like with every passing hour he lost a little more substance.

“Hey,” Dean said. “Don’t make that face. We’ll fix this.”

“You don’t have to—” 

“Do we fucking need to have that conversation again?”

“You don’t have to fix everything,” Sam finished softly. 

Dean ground his teeth, feeling the ache spread from his jaws to his temple, giving the jumpstart to a headache. “This, at least, I have to fix.”

Sam sighed and said nothing. Too tired to fight, probably.

Silence stretched for a while, Sam so quiet that Dean would have thought he’d fallen asleep if he didn’t know any better. Some part of him did hold onto the hope that Sam _was_ asleep, foolishly enough, and he let himself entertain the illusion by not checking on Sam for about ten minutes. If he wasn’t watching, for all he knew his brother could be sleeping. Sam shattered this daydream all by himself when he spoke up, “I think you should leave me somewhere while you go check that this guy’s on the level.”

“Well, yeah, I thought you would be staying at the motel. I mean, I’m not gonna drag you through town if this guy’s a bust.”

“This wasn’t what I meant.”

“What did you mean, then?”

“I didn’t mean a motel. I meant something more like a psychiatric hospital.”

Dean almost swerved them off the road.

“Jesus Christ, Dean!” Sam yelled. The shock from the car almost crashing had breathed second life into him and he’d sat up in his seat, his cheeks flushed with emotion.

“What’re you talking about? I’m not gonna drop you to the nuthouse like you’re a fucking head case!”

“I—” Sam jumped and tightened his jaws, probably in reaction to something his demonic headmate had done or said. “I _am_ a head case.” He lifted his bandaged arm off his lap. “Look what happened already. I almost got ran over by a car! I can’t trust half of what I see or hear. He could—” Sam cut himself off, biting back on the words he’d been about to say, like he’d gone too far already by giving Lucifer the honor of a personal pronoun. “I can’t be left on my own. And you need to go see this guy.”

Dean gripped the wheel hard enough that he felt like the skin was going to snap at the knuckles. “We’ll talk about it when we get there,” he said.

Sam sagged back into his seat, looking spent. The will to argue seemed to have leaked out of him. “What’s this place?” he asked instead.

Dean had told him all this before. He’d talked about Bobby’s druidic friend and had named their destination, but sleeplessness made Sam’s memory flicker like a dying radio. 

“Bobby’s friend lives in California. Should bring back some memories, right, Sammy?” He flashed Sam a smile, but Sam didn’t look like he’d seen it, or at least he didn’t react to it. “Somewhere up north. I believe the name of the town’s Beacon Hills.”

\---

 _It doesn’t look so bad_ , was Sam’s first thought when he and his brother entered the hall of Eichen House. It was wide and well-lit, with arched glass doors and square white columns. Without the people in scrubs wandering around, it would have looked like a nice seaside resort.

“It’s not so bad,” he made the effort of saying out loud for Dean’s benefit. Standing by his side like a very intense bodyguard, his brother was scowling at everyone in the hall like he was thinking about testing them with holy water. Or worse.

“Man, this place gives off a terrible vibe,” Lucifer commented, loudly cheerful. “Sammy my boy, I’ll think we’ll have a lot of fun here.”

Sam ignored him, as he always did—except for that one time, you idiot, you let him in, shut up, shut up—but unfortunately Lucifer’s words had overridden whatever reply Dean had made. 

“Sorry, you were saying? I—I didn’t hear you.” Dean gave him a pained look. “Look, Dean, this is just proving my point. I can’t be left alone, and you can’t drag me around town.”

This made Dean scowl even harder and he looked like he was going to argue. Sam stifled a sigh. They’d had that argument already, back at the motel. Dean had obviously hoped that Sam would feel too drained to bring up the topic of hospitalization again, but Sam’s stubbornness was all that still sustained him. He’d looked it up on the Internet and found about Eichen House, and then it had been a battle of wills to convince Dean. Maybe he’d only won because he looked so awful his brother had taken pity on him, but in the end all that mattered was that they were here now. Sam only wanted to find a bed and try to rest. What he really wanted was sleep, of course, but that didn’t look like it would be happening any time soon, and he would take what he could. If his mind would just—

The pristine white walls of Eichen House’s hall started bleeding. The blood ran down from the ceiling to the floor until they were covered with it and it looked like they were standing in a slaughterhouse. Sam resisted the urge to close his eyes. His ears rang with the sound of Lucifer’s manic laughter—mocking him for his futile resistance—and the only thing that kept him from covering them with his hands was the knowledge that it would do nothing to stop the sound. 

“Dean,” he said, his voice strained. “Let’s get this over with. _Please_.”

Dean narrowed his eyes, but once again Sam must have looked sufficiently terrible to kill his will to continue this fight. 

“Fine,” Dean said, with just a little bite to the word. “If you’re sure.”

Sam let him take the lead through the whole procedure, and barely remembered anything about it afterward. They took his belt, and his phone, and for a moment Sam thought his brother was going to drag him by the arm out of the hospital right here and then, but he merely gritted his teeth and told Sam, “I’ll come and get you as soon as I can.”

An orderly led Sam through weirdly echoing hallways. Lucifer was making idle comments as they walked, but he was acting strangely subdued compared to his usual self and it wasn’t very hard to tune him out.

“We’re having a little problem right now: the teenager ward is crowded and we don’t have enough beds for all our patients,” the orderly explained. Sam didn’t understand why until she opened the door to a room he supposed was his, and Sam saw that one of the two narrow beds was occupied by a teenage boy with dark hair.

The kid sat up on the bed at their entrance. “Hey,” he said, frowning at Sam. “Where’s Oliver?”

“Oliver has gone back home,” the orderly said. “Here’s your new roommate.”

“But—”

“You’re not gonna make any trouble, right, Stiles?” the orderly said with a pointed look.

“Oh, I wouldn’t dream of it,” mumbled the boy—what kind of name was _Stiles_? He fell back on his bed, scowling at the ceiling.

“Make yourself at home,” the orderly said to Sam, who nodded dazedly. “We’re locking you up for the night.”

She closed the door behind her, and when Sam heard the clicking sound of the lock he had the impulse to call her back, say he’d changed his mind. It only got worse when Lucifer looked at Sam’s new roommate and said with unholy glee, “Sammy, you got yourself in a bit of a situation.”

 _What do you mean?_ Sam wanted to say, but didn’t. It didn’t seem to make any difference to Lucifer because he answered as though Sam had spoken out loud, “Oh, I can’t tell you. I’ll be a lot more fun to let you find out by yourself.”

Sam walked heavily to the empty bed and dropped down on it. It felt good to be off his feet. He lay down over the covers, and for an instant the prone position brought a relief so intense he almost thought it might be enough. In a matter of minutes, though, he started to feel restless and desperate for sleep again, but then Lucifer started bouncing on the bed so that still wasn’t in the cards.

He almost startled when Stiles said, “Soooo, what’s your name?”

“Sam.”

“Welcome to Eichen House, Sam. I’m Stiles—and no, that’s not my real first name, it’s a nickname based on my last name, but my real name is unpronounceable and even my dad calls me Stiles.”

“’Stiles’ is fine,” Sam said hoarsely. Speaking had started to feel like a chore.

He heard a rustle as Stiles shifted on his bed. “You look terrible, man. When was the last time you slept?”

Sam chuckled weakly. “It’s been a while. Can’t sleep.”

Stiles’ little snort sounded almost amused, and it puzzled Sam enough that he turned his head on the pillow to look at the boy. He squinted at him and saw that Stiles looked tired too, his eyes shadowed and his mouth pulled tight. Another insomniac? This was indeed an almost amusing coincidence, if one had a twisted sense of humor. Although Sam doubted this kid also shared headspace with the Devil.

As if cued by Sam thinking about him, Lucifer started to cackle madly. 

“You can’t sleep either?” Sam said, trying to sound something else than utterly exhausted.

Stiles shot him a look Sam couldn’t decipher. “You could say that, I guess. I _can’t_ sleep.” 

There was something odd about the way he emphasized _can’t_ , but Sam’s brain had been shrinking for days and he couldn’t put his finger on it. 

\---

His new roommate was quiet. Too quiet, even, and at some point during the night Stiles might have wished that Sam was a little more outwardly crazy, if only to keep him entertained. But if Stiles had felt a twinge of unease when he’d realized that he was going to share a room with a grown-up man built like a mountain, he didn’t anymore. Dude was obviously at the end of his rope, eaten away by lack of sleep: pale face, bruised eyes, every one of his movements heavy like he wore his clothes doubled with lead. He had a bandaged wrist and Stiles wondered if it was the result of self-harm. Looking at Sam was like staring his own future in the face, what would become of him if his friends didn’t quickly find a way to get him rid of his clandestine passenger. 

This wasn’t a cheery thought. None of his thoughts were very cheery, and one of the problems with this not sleeping thing is that when you’re not asleep, nights are long and unbearably _boring_. He tried to distract himself: sing songs in his head, trying to remember all the lyrics, recite the alphabet backward—although that almost put him to sleep, so he stopped—even do _math_ problems, which would undoubtedly make Lydia very proud of him if she knew. It was never enough to keep his thoughts away from everything he didn’t want to think about. The thing that came up the most was that memory of himself twisting a sword into Scott—that _look_ on Scott’s face, the utter betrayal in his eyes, the pain. 

Sam yelled, fell off the bed, and Stiles almost jumped out of his skin. A fortunate thing, actually, because now that he was wide awake Stiles realized that he’d been drifting off to sleep. So he sounded only mildly pissed off when he said, “Jesus, man. You almost gave me a heart attack.”

“Sorry,” Sam mumbled. 

He sat down on the edge of the bed, leaned his elbows on his shoulders, and rubbed his face with both hands in a gesture that betrayed a weariness that went beyond words. 

“Did I sleep?” he asked. “How long was I asleep?”

“Uh.” Lacking anything better to do, Stiles had checked on Sam not too long ago, and the man had been blinking owlishly at the ceiling then. “No more than a few minutes,” he answered. Then he added, “Sorry,” because Sam had sounded so hopeful when he asked.

“Of course,” Sam muttered. “You _asshole_.”

“Beg your pardon?”

“No, not you, just—” 

Sam gestured vaguely and Stiles followed the direction of his hand, but there was nothing there that Stiles could perceive in the semi-darkness of their room. Was Sam seeing or hearing things? Anything was possible, after all, given where they were. 

“I’m sorry,” Sam said. “Did I wake you up?”

“Nah, it’s cool. Told you I can’t sleep.”

“Right. You told me that.”

Sam raised his head and Stiles couldn’t quite make out his expression, but he could hear something in Sam’s voice that pierced through his usual tone of inhuman exhaustion. Something assessing. 

“Did you have a nightmare?” he asked quickly, wanted to divert Sam’s attention from him. “Looked pretty nasty from where I stand.”

“Something like that. A nasty piece of work.”

The last words sounded like they were addressed to someone else, and Stiles contained a shiver. For all that Sam looked like he would keel over at a breath of wind, he was a man twice Stiles’ size and he was, uh. Well, he must have a reason to be here. 

“Why are you in for, by the way?” he asked before his brain could veto it. 

Then he winced: there was probably some kind of mental hospital etiquette that forbid that sort of query. Plus, it invited the same question about him, and he definitely didn’t want to discuss that topic.

“I hear and see things,” Sam said flatly. Huh, so Stiles had been right—how _not_ comforting at all. “Whether they caused the insomnia, or the insomnia is brought by the hallucinations has yet to be determined. ‘Psychotic breakdown’ were the words the doctor used.”

“Oh,” Stiles said, feeling like a shithead. “That’s, uh, that’s rough, man.”

He waited for Sam to turn the question around on him, which would only be fair, and tried to think of what he could answer. He could always say he suffered from the same thing, and it wouldn’t even be too far from the truth: those glimpses he’d caught of the nogitsune since his arrival, they _had_ to be hallucinations. A way for that damn fox to mess with his mind since he couldn’t control him for the moment. Because the alternative, that the nogitsune was somehow able to project himself out of Stiles and manipulate things around him, was so scary that Stiles might shit himself just thinking about it. 

_What the matter, Jordan?_

_It’s gone! I can’t find it!_

Stiles startled and shot the locked door a look. Fuck, those echoes sounded like the voices of ghosts summoned from hell.

“You heard that,” Sam said. 

It wasn’t a question, and Stiles thought of what Sam had just said about having auditory hallucinations. He probably couldn’t trust anything he heard, but the notion that he was using _Stiles_ as a soundboard for reality almost made him giggle from the irony of it.

“Yeah,” he said, trying to keep the chuckles in. Maybe the urge to laugh was a symptom of the sleep deprivation setting in. “Don’t worry about it. They’re, uh, they’re just echoes. Oliver—he was my roommate before you—told me there was something about the way this place was built that made everything echo. Creepy, right?”

More words drifted up to them, bouncing against the walls on their way: _going to sleep now… give you something to help…_

“How long have you been here?” Sam asked.

“Just for a day.”

He’d been here for one day, and he already felt like an old hand at this—look at him, helping a newbie settle in. A few months in this place and he would fit in there like he’d never known anything else. 

_Except you don’t have a few months, do you?_

Sam had lapsed into silence again, maybe trying to get back to sleep, maybe just too exhausted to keep talking. Stiles braced himself for a few more hours of being alone in the dark with his own thoughts. 

\---

Ironically, Dean had a hard time sleeping after he left Sam behind at the loony bin. It was far from the first time he’d slept in a motel room on his own, but he always got used again to his brother’s presence so fast every time he got him back that he still found the room too quiet for his taste. The sounds from the odd car driving past his window at irregular intervals, the loud arguments from the drunks coming out of the bar that was up ahead the street, the strident cat fights, only served to underline the absence of another person’s noises in the room. 

He slept in fits, waking several times to the dark, quiet room with his heart pounding, overcome by the panicked thought that there was something he should be doing. In a way, it had been easier when he had Sam to fret over; now he just felt restless and impotent. 

He was awake and up at 6, but made himself wait for a decent hour before he visited the druid. He went to get coffee at the diner across the street, and used the restaurant’s WiFi to check the local news on Sam’s laptop. He wasn’t looking for anything in particular; it was just a lifelong habit, but what he found made him frown: a lot of animal attacks, mass murderers on the loose, ninja attacks—what the hell?—and apparently the police station had recently been blown up.

“Huh,” Dean murmured, absentmindedly putting his coffee cup to his lips, then grimacing when he found it empty. “Quiet little town ain’t so quiet after all.”

He dug deeper, and discovered animal attacks up the wazoo, missing person cases, mysterious arsons. All his hunter instincts flared up and multiple alarms rang in his mind like a symphony. This town looked like it was very, very bad news, and usually it would just mean that they’d found their next case and it was business as usual, but right now, with Sam as vulnerable as he was… Although maybe he’d be safer locked up in that hospital rather than outside in a crazy town. 

“Shit,” Dean said with feeling, shutting down the lid on the last article he’d read: SON OF SHERIFF GOES MISSING, said the headline.

Apparently the kid had been found two days after going missing, having merely run away after a mental breakdown. Dean couldn’t blame him—he felt that Beacon Hills must have triggered more than one mental breakdown. He checked his watch, and decided that he could now finally go pay Dr. Deaton a little visit and not be arrested for harassment. Maybe he’d ask the druid for some insight about what was going on in this town while he was there.

The animal clinic where Dr. Deaton the druid worked was a small squat building. Even as early as it was a bike was already parked at the front when Dean arrived. When he pushed the front door, echoes of an argument reached him: “—telling me I have to kill him! You’re no better than Argent.”

“I did not say that, Scott, I just meant that you have to be prepared for—”

The voice stopped abruptly, and Dean knew his presence must have been noticed. He cleared his throat and called out, “Hello?”

A bald black man appeared into the entry hall. “Did you have an appointment?” he asked. 

The man looked cool and unbothered, but Dean had enough experience interrogating all kinds of people, including people who were used to keeping secrets, to notice the faint undercurrent of stress in the way the man held himself. His presence wasn’t welcome, he surmised; he must have interrupted something.

“Sort of,” he said. “My name’s Dean Winchester. We spoke on the phone.”

The man’s jaws clenched almost imperceptibly. A dark-haired teenager materialized behind him, calling an inquisitive, “Deaton? Is there a problem?” 

The boy saw Dean standing in the hall and looked him over: it was a look that held more curiosity than hostility in it, but also with a hint of wariness that was out of place in someone that age. 

“It’s fine, Scott,” the veterinarian said. “We’ll talk again when you come after school.”

The teenager opened his mouth like he wanted to keep arguing, but then snapped it shut, probably deterred by Dean’s presence.

“Okay,” he said, with obvious reluctance. “See you later.”

Deaton’s eyes left Dean for a moment to look at the boy, and his features softened the tiniest amount. “It will be fine,” he said.

A shadow fluttered across the boy—Scott—’s face. “Yeah,” he said.

He walked past Dean to get to the door, glancing sideways at him again, and when they were just inches apart Scott leaned slightly in Dean’s direction and—snorted? sniffed? Then the bell from the front door jingled with his exit and Dean was left alone with Dr. Deaton the druid-slash-veterinarian. 

“Am I coming at a bad time,” Dean said flatly. 

“Scott’s my assistant,” Deaton said. It hadn’t been Dean’s question. The evasion tactic earned Deaton one checkmark in the suspicious column. “He’s upset because we might have to put down his pet.”

 _Really?_ Dean had recognized the look on Scott’s face, because he’d seen it in the mirror countless times: it was desperation mingled with grim resolve, the look of someone who was about to lose something he loved but wasn’t done fighting for it. Maybe the prospect of losing his pet had put that look on Scott’s face; Dean had never had any pets, so what did he know of the undying loyalty between man and man’s best friend?

“That sucks,” he commented neutrally. “I haven’t come to talk to you about pets, though.”

“No, I remember your call. Your brother, right?”

“Yeah, that’s right. Can you help him or not?”

Deaton walked around the counter at the end of the hall. “First, let me address you my condolences.”

Dean recoiled with a jerk, feeling like the words like a sucker punch. “What?”

“You and Bobby Singer were old friends, if I’m not mistaken. His was a great loss for a lot of people.”

“Yeah, well, thanks. Not that I don’t appreciate the sentiment, but this isn’t what I came here for. I need—”

“I’m afraid this isn’t exactly the right time for me. If you could come back in a few days, I would—”

“My brother doesn’t have a few days!” Dean marched across the hall to plant himself in front of Deaton. To his credit, the man didn’t look intimidated in the slightest. “I hauled us half across the country to get here! Look, if you can’t help me, just say it. I’ll find someone else. But if you _can_ help, then I’m not sitting around waiting to fit in your schedule while my brother is losing his goddamn mind piece by piece.”

Deaton’s cool eyes pinned Dean’s for a moment, like he was trying to read the bottom of his soul. Hell, maybe he _was_ , and the thought had Dean take an involuntary step back. 

“Mr. Winchester,” Deaton said calmly. “I understand your concern. But I can’t work on your brother’s problem for the moment.”

 _Does it have anything to do with all the weird stuff happening in this town?_ Dean thought it, but refrained himself from saying it out loud at the last moment. He didn’t know where Deaton stood in this mess—it sure looked like he was covering for something, and given that he knew what Dean’s job was, it couldn’t be anything good. If Dean let out that he already suspected something fishy, he was going to send Deaton and whoever he protected running for the hills. 

“Alright,” Dean said, fists clenching at his sides. “I’ll wait a couple of days. No longer.”

“I hope I’ll be able to help your brother.”

He might even have been sincere; there was no way to tell from the smooth lack of expression on his face.

“Yeah,” Dean said. “I sure hope so.”

\---

Even though he had barely slept more than a handful minutes at a time, the next morning found Sam groggy, like he was waking up from a too deep sleep. He had blinked at the cracks on the ceiling and at the tiled walls long enough during the night that the room now felt as familiar as a childhood bedroom. 

On the other side of the room, Stiles slid his body off the bed until he sitting on the edge, rubbing his face with both hands in an exhausted gesture that Sam knew all too well.

“They’ll unlock our room pretty soon,” Stiles said, squinting like he had a headache—which he probably did, if Sam’s experience was anything to go with. “I can give you a tour, if you want. Not that—”

The rest of Stiles sentence was drowned in a blood-curdling scream that sent Sam tumbling out of bed. He landed down on his knees, the shock reverberating in his already sore body, and caught himself on his hurt wrist. When he started to haul himself up to his feet, body creaking like an old house, he caught Stiles looking at him with wide eyes. 

In a corner of the room, Lucifer was sneering at him. “Gotcha!”

Sam pinched his lips, refusing to look in his direction. “I’m okay,” he said to Stiles. 

“What the hell was that, dude?” Stiles said, dismissing his statement. Fair enough, as Sam probably looked miles away from okay. Not everyone bought into the Winchester’s credo of ‘fake it ‘til you make it.’ “What did you hear that was so bad? Okay, ignore that,” Stiles said before Sam could muster up an answer. “This is none of my business, and I’m not even sure I want to know.”

“No, you probably don’t.”

Their door was unlocked by one of the orderlies. After they’d eaten the bland breakfast they were served, Stiles took Sam on his promised tour of the facility, or at least as far as they were allowed to go. The security was pretty lax—it was second nature to Sam to check these things—but they came across a mean-looking orderly, who Stiles called Brunski, and Sam instinctively catalogued him as someone to be wary of. Stiles told him about a few of the other people he already knew by name. His babble had a hard time piercing through the fog blurring Sam’s mind and dimming his feelings, though, and Sam concentrated on merely following him through the halls. 

“That’s Dan, thinks he’s Jesus. Apparently, there are a lot of Jesuses around here. That’s Gary, here is Meredith. She’s, uh, she’s weird. That’s Hillary—she has OCD.”

A girl with long tawny hair was coming the other way. She moved with a rare kind of confidence, a contained power in her limbs that Sam had only ever seen in predators. When she walked past Stiles, she shot him a dark look.

“That was Malia,” Stiles said, twisting around to watch the girl walk away. “She doesn’t like me very much.”

“After only one day?”

“No, we, um, we’ve met before. And, no,” Stiles raised a finger at Sam, “we’ve never dated.”

“It’s not my business,” Sam said, even though he had indeed assumed that this was the problem. He felt like his own teenage years were a lifetime away, but he remembered that there was enough drama to choose from. 

Stiles kept talking, but so did Lucifer, and it was easier to tune them both out rather than trying to untangle who was saying what. Stiles’ back was a beacon that Sam stubbornly focused on, making it the center of his world as the rest of his surrounding faded into a dream-like haze. His own footsteps, for some reason, resounded louder than the rest, like they were walking in a tunnel and sound bounced against the walls. Maybe it had something to do with the strange echoing quality of the building that Stiles had mentioned during the night. Or had he? Sam could as well have hallucinated the whole conversation. 

“… this guy I don’t know, but he looks mighty creepy…”

“…thought that maybe Dean just skipped town and left you…”

Sam’s head was spinning, and his chest hurt like he’d walked up a mountain. He was about to tell Stiles he was going back to their room, when Stiles stopped abruptly and his back stopped being Sam’s focus point to become a wall that he had no choice but walk into. Or maybe just a low, crumbling wall—Stiles stumbled against the weight of Sam’s body colliding into him, and he yelped.

“Sorry,” Sam mumbled. “You stopped. I—”

“Yeah, sorry, I just—You know what? Let’s go back. Tour’s over.”

“Stiles!”

A slim, dark-skinned woman with straight long hair hurried across the room they’d just stepped into, obviously intent on Stiles. Stiles groaned, swore under his breath, and walked up to meet her halfway. They talked in low whispers, heads bowed together like they didn’t want their conversation to be overheard, and in spite of himself Sam felt a little more alert, his interest piqued by the mystery. 

“…just like you said,” he caught Stiles saying. His voice was tight with annoyance, as well as with something sharper—fear, Sam thought. 

“Let me see,” the woman said. 

She was speaking louder than Stiles but in a calmer, more even voice that actually drew less attention. She reached for Stiles’ shoulder but he jerked away, then stretched the collar of his t-shirt himself so she could look at something on the exposed part of his shoulder and back. 

“Aren’t you curious about what’s going on here?”

Sam jumped at the sound of Lucifer, so close to his ear that he had to be—yep, he was leaning over Sam’s shoulder, although his eyes were on Stiles and the woman. 

“What’s on his shoulder? What’s this kid hiding?” Lucifer went on in a conspiratorial voice. “You could ask him, just to see his reaction.”

“This isn’t any of my business,” Sam said out loud.

He caught Lucifer’s delighted smile at being acknowledged, and cursed himself inwardly. This was sort of a game that he and Lucifer were playing—him trying to ignore Lucifer, and Lucifer trying to catch him off-guard and make him react—and Sam felt like he was losing more and more ground. What would happen if he lost enough of it? Would he get completely erased, end up a drooling mess? You couldn’t play the Devil, because the game was always rigged in his favor. 

Stiles came back, looking in equal parts pissed off and scared. Even having known him for less than 24 hours Sam felt a twinge of sympathy for the kid. But Stiles’ issues weren’t anything that Sam could fix, and even if he could he wasn’t in a shape to help anyone. 

“I have group therapy in ten minutes,” Stiles said. He was tense and twitchy, and his eyes moved frantically without ever resting on Sam, like he was afraid to look at him. “But you can go back to our room. Or, you know, do anything you like, since you’re a grown man and I’m a teenager, so it’s not like I can give you orders or anything.”

“Okay. Uh, but, I think I might have an appointment with one of the doctors?” He seemed to remember something like that being mentioned when he signed in, although the memory was hazy. 

“One of the orderlies will probably come and get you.” Stiles’ eyes finally met his. “You look like death warmed over, man.”

Sam felt his lips twitch with wry humor. “This is a quite accurate definition of how I feel.”

“I’ve been awake for 48 hours, and I haven’t had a good night’s sleep in weeks before that. It’s gonna get worse before it gets even worse, right?”

Stiles’ voice was tinged with tired resignation, and a thought occurred to Sam: why hadn’t any of the doctors tried to sedate Stiles, if his insomnia was so bad? Sam knew it didn’t work on _him_ , but it should work on Stiles. Why—

Stiles’ eyes slid sideways, and what he saw there made him flinch hard. Sam turned his head to look in the same direction, wondering what had set him off, but all he saw was the tail end of someone turning around the corner. Maybe it was another one of those people Stiles seemed to have a history with despite having been in Eichen House for no more than a day.

A mix of shouting and loud exclamations echoed back to them. Before Sam had the time to wonder what was going on, Stiles swore and said, “Not again!” Then he was off, running in direction of the commotion.

“See, when I told you we’d have fun here!” Lucifer said. 

\---

The noises led Stiles through the hallways to one of the patients’ rooms. People were packed at the entrance, and Stiles had to elbow his way through the crowd until he could see what was going on inside: a white man in his late twenties, early thirties, lean like a whip and with a closely shaved head, was standing on one of the twin beds, pressing something against his throat—Stiles made it out to be some sort of thin silvery blade, maybe a paperknife. Orderlies half-circled the bed—the other side of it was against the wall—while Brunski was trying to talk down the patient.

“Come on, Adam,” he was saying, “you don’t want to make me do this. You know it’s not going to end well for you.”

Brunski had a not-so-stealthy needle in his hand, and Stiles thought with distaste that if he were the suicidal guy, he’d take one look at the two evils presented to him and think that the knife didn’t seem so bad at all. 

“Adam,” Brunski repeated in a somewhat menacing tone. “Get the _fuck_ down. Gimme the knife.”

Adam ignored the orderly, his eyes sweeping over the crowd crammed in the doorway like he was looking for someone, and then stopping on Stiles. He smiled vaguely in recognition and Stiles’ heart skipped a beat. He could swear he’d never seen that man in his life.

“See? I’m doing it just as you said,” Adam said, and just as the “NO!” was making its way out of Stiles’ throat, Adam pressed the blade against his throat and blood spurted from the wound. He crumpled, blood spreading over his t-shirt, and the orderlies rushed to catch him as he fell. One of them pressed a hand against Adam’s throat, trying to stave the blood flow, and Brunski took care of clearing out the crowd.

“Everyone goes back to their room!” he barked at them. “Nothing to see here! You go back to your room and you wait to be picked up for therapy!”

Stiles, and Sam—who had ended up following him—were herded back to their room by Judith, the black orderly who’d escorted Stiles on his first day. 

“How common is it to have two suicides so close to each other, huh?” Stiles tried to ask her. “Don’t you think that’s weird? I mean, were those people particularly suicidal? Did they—”

“This is none of your concern, Stiles.”

“Well, you know, as a fellow human being I think that—”

Judith stopped in her tracks to give Stiles a look. “You sound a bit high-strung, Stiles. Do you need something to calm you down?”

She’d delivered the question flatly rather than in the threatening way that Brunski had used to very inefficiently talk down Adam from slitting his throat, but a sharp pulse of fear cut through Stiles anyway. He couldn’t risk the medication making him sleepy. It was hard enough staying awake as it was.

“No, it’s fine,” he said in a strangled voice. “I’m totally fine.”

“Alright, then.”

Stiles thought they would be locked up, but he didn’t hear the telltale sound of the lock being turned after Judith closed the door. He filed that in for future use, but right now he felt too tired and shell-shocked by what had happened to think about going exploring. There was this basement problem, the basement he’d had a glimpse of after Malia had punched him and that he could swear he’d seen before, but all he could think about was the look in Adam’s eyes just before he—He’d looked at him, he’d _talked_ to him like he was someone else, like he was—

Stiles took a deep breath and held it trapped in his chest until it hurt, willing the oxygen to help clear his mind. Adam had looked at him and addressed him like he was the goddamn fox. And Stiles had caught a glimpse of the nogitsune just before it happened, just as he’d seen him when this other guy had hanged himself to the railing. This couldn’t be a coincidence, but Stiles had no idea how the fox might have influenced those people, and what he could do about it that he wasn’t already doing. Other than killing himself, and he wasn’t exactly in a hurry to get to that point.

“Stiles?”

Stiles shook himself from his dark thoughts to look at Sam. The man was giving him a concerned look, so Stiles said, “Yeah, I’m fine.”

“You don’t look fine.” Sam smiled slightly. “It’s pretty hard to fool me, you know—my brother is a master at denial.”

“Well, I admit I’ve probably had better days.”

Sam was still looking at him, and after a few long seconds of it Stiles grew uncomfortable under the scrutiny. 

“Do I have something in my teeth?”

“What’s on your shoulder?” Sam asked, and the lack of relation between this question and what Stiles had said threw Stiles off-kilter. “Is that a scar? It looks strange.”

Stiles instinctively clenched a hand over the part of the mark that emerged from the collar of his shirt to cover it. Sam’s expression was still friendly enough, but he looked more focused than Stiles had seen him until now, and with it came a sharpness that made Stiles wary, reminding him how much he didn’t know the man. All that bonded them was the natural brotherhood of people who were forced to share quarters, but now that feeling was starting to dissipate, leaving Stiles to see Sam as a strange and possibly hostile presence.

“Just a scar,” he said, and waited for Sam to ask more pointed questions.

Sam seemed to catch on that he shouldn’t push, though, and merely nodded like he was satisfied with Stiles’ cagey answer, which actually made Stiles even more suspicious of him. 

“Shut up,” Sam hissed suddenly, obviously not to Stiles. 

Stiles felt a chill run up his spine as he wondered what the voices in Sam’s head were telling him. Hey, he thought, at least it gave him good incentive not to fall asleep. Better keep an eye open in case your crazy roommate decides to strangle you while you sleep.

\---

Stiles fell silent after that, lying down on his bed and staring at the ceiling, so Sam did the same, savoring the momentary relief it brought him. The screams his aching body had sent him since he got up abated without the strain of standing up, and the slight lessening of pain felt almost like pleasure. Glancing at the floor, he saw that it was crawling with ants; there were so many of them that the tiles disappeared under a red-brown shimmer—the color of drying blood. Sam turned his eyes back to the ceiling, and tried to think about something else. 

He wouldn’t have been sure of what had happened if not for Stiles and everyone else’s reactions. Thanks to them, he felt fairly secure in reviewing the sequence of events as something that had actually taken place: one of the patients had tried to kill himself in front of an audience—given the kind of blade he’d used and the quick reaction from the staff, Sam thought there was a chance he was still alive. Maybe he should tell Stiles this, because the kid had looked pretty upset, but Stiles was the big question mark there. A suicide attempt in a mental hospital seemed unremarkable in itself, but Stiles had alluded to the fact that it was the second one in as many days; which meant two suicides since Stiles had arrived. The memory of the suicidal guy looking at Stiles, talking to him— _I’m doing it just as you said_ —flitted through Sam’s mind. _That_ was the part that stuck out the most to him, as well as the one that he was the less sure had been real.

“Oh, come on, Sam,” Lucifer said. “Do you really think I would deceive you like this? Hurts a guy’s feelings, it does.”

Sam shot a glance in his roommate’s direction. Stiles was blinking at the ceiling, quietly muttering to himself. At some point his eyes stayed closed just a bit longer than a normal blink, and Sam saw him pinch the skin on his forearm before his eyes fluttered open and he swore softly, looking impatient with himself. Watching that scene, something clicked in Sam’s side on what had kept nagging at him about Stiles’ behavior: the boy wasn’t trying to fall asleep, like Sam was desperately trying to do; on the contrary, he was trying to keep himself _awake._

It could be that terrible nightmares lurked in the recess of his mind and that he wanted to avoid them—God knew that Sam was familiar with that particular problem—but Sam couldn’t stop thinking about the way Stiles had said that he _couldn’t_ fall asleep last night, and his instinct told him that there was something more going on here.

“Alright,” Stiles said suddenly, sitting up on his bed. When his feet touched the sea of crawling ants on the floor, Sam bit the inside of his cheek not to flinch. “I’m guessing group therapy has been cancelled, and I need to do something. I’m going for a walk.”

“How are you going to get out of here?”

“Door’s unlocked, dude.” Sam hadn’t even noticed; he really _was_ out of it. “Either it’s an oversight on Judith’s part,” Stiles went on, “and it would be a shame not to take advantage of it, _or_ she left it open because we totally have a right to wander around. Either way, I’m out.”

He wasn’t asking Sam to come with him, and Sam’s mind wept at the mere idea of getting up again, but something compelled him to do it anyway: whether Stiles was in danger or he was a danger to others, Sam felt duty-bound to keep an eye on him.

“I’m coming with you,” he said, and braced himself for contact with the ant-filled floor. 

He stood up gingerly, feeling the small insects climb up his leg, under his pants, shuddering against the sensation of them creeping over his bare skin. Stiles still didn’t look alarmed by the floor, which meant the ants weren’t real, but that thought wasn’t as comforting as it should’ve been.

“Are you sure?” Stiles said, looking at him doubtfully. “Maybe you should stay in bed.”

Sam was too focused on the insects to be able to tell if that was really concern in Stiles’ voice, or more of the wariness he’d shown before. 

“I’m sure,” Sam ground out. Any moment now, Lucifer would get tired of that particular illusion.

“Okay. Let’s do this, then.”

Sam followed Stiles through hallways that had no windows. The electric light shed by the overhead lamps fixed at regular intervals on the ceiling wasn’t quite enough to properly illuminate their way and shadows lurked in the corners, but Stiles moved confidently, as though he had a destination in mind.

“Where are we going?” Sam asked. The ants had disappeared, and Lucifer himself was nowhere to be seen for the moment.

“The basement,” Stiles answered in a low voice; for all he’d said that they were probably allowed to get out of their room, he acted like he was taking an illicit stroll on a minefield. “I need to see the basement.”

“What’s in the basement?”

“I don’t know. But there’s always something interesting in the basement; isn’t it how it works?”

The conversation was interrupted by a cry. Sam could hear terror and surprise in it, but it was short-lived, more like a yelp, and no other screams or voices followed it. It lacked a certain dramatic flair that tended to belong to Lucifer’s hallucinations, so Sam wasn’t surprised when Stiles said, “What was that? Where did it come from?”

The echoes made it hard to tell where any given noise came from, so Sam shrugged to signal his ignorance. They both stood still in the middle of the hallway, straining to hear more, but that part of the building was now eerily silent. 

“Maybe we just imagined it,” Stiles said hesitantly.

“But you heard it too,” Sam couldn’t help saying.

“Yeah, about that… I’m sorry to disappoint, but I’m probably not the most reliable—Oh.”

Stiles’ eyes were fixed on something over Sam’s shoulder, so Sam turned to look at whatever had caught his attention: a girl stood at the far end of the corridor, dressed in t-shirt and sweatpants like she was a patient. Long dark hair tumbled down her back, but she was angled away from them and Sam couldn’t see her face.

“Hey,” Stiles called. “Hey, did you—”

She didn’t hear him, or maybe she just decided to ignore him, because she disappeared around the corner before Stiles could finish his question. Stiles broke into a jog, heading in her direction, and Sam followed with a heavy sigh. Stiles turned around the corner where the girl had vanished just a few seconds before Sam did, and Sam heard his muffled curse before he saw the body lying across the hallway. It was a girl with dark hair.

“Is she—” Stiles said, sounding like he wouldn’t be able to stand it if she was dead.

Sam kneeled down by the body and tried to feel for her pulse. It was there, slow but steady, and Stiles breathed a small sigh of relief when Sam told him as much. He kneeled by Sam and together they rolled the girl over to have a closer look at her.

“Jesus,” Stiles swore.

The girl’s eyes were open, staring blankly at nothing. It made her look like a fresh corpse, although Sam could still feel the regular pound of her heartbeat under his fingertips. What could have done this? It struck Sam as very strange that this girl—if she was indeed the girl they’d just seen—had turned the corner a few seconds ago to crumple face first into an inexplicable paralytic state. Also, who had just screamed, if it wasn’t her?

Stiles was staring fixedly at the girl as though she was some puzzle he had to decipher, his fingers clenching convulsively. He murmured something but Sam only caught the word “kanima.”

“What did you say?” Sam asked. “A kanima?”

Sam had read about kanimas, although he’d never hunted one. They were lizard shapeshifters who secreted a paralytic poison, so it was all too possible that a kanima could have attacked this girl—the only question was, how did _Stiles_ know about it?

Sam set that burning question for later, and did a cursory examination of the girl’s body. As far as he could see without getting indecent, there was no bite mark or stung mark, no scratches anywhere on her skin.

“No mark,” he murmured. Could the poison be effective through mere contact with bare skin? Sam wasn’t sure, and he didn’t have any of his research resources with him.

Stiles shot him a look, and seemed about to say something when echoing voices reached them. Whatever Stiles had meant to say it became: “We need to get out of here. They’ll take care of her, and if we get caught like this they could think that we’ve done something to her.”

Sam looked at him, at his pale, nervous face. He didn’t really disagree, but what normal teenager reasoned like this? Or, maybe, having never really been a normal teenager himself, Sam wasn’t in the best position to judge. 

They scurried off before they could be seen by the newcomers, but the echoing hallways did their job of reporting their reactions at finding the girl. Sam and Stiles got back to their room without meeting anyone else, and once they’d closed the door and were safely cut off from the rest of the world, Stiles turned suspicious eyes on Sam and said, “Who the hell _are_ you?”

\---

After he got back from Deaton’s animal clinic, Dean considered his options as he aimlessly drove the Impala around the town. Despite what he’d said to Deaton, part of him wanted nothing more than to grab his brother and get the hell out of dodge. Let’s say Deaton had told the truth, that he genuinely wanted to help and hadn’t lied about being too busy for the moment—there was no certainty that he would be able to help, and then they’d would’ve lost two days, and Sam would be a little closer to insanity. 

On the other hand, if they left now, Dean had no idea where to take them, where they could find help. The first trip had been hard on Sam, and he was unlikely to be feeling better now that he’d been awake for one more day.

Dean slowly drove past the police station that had recently been blown up, and watched the swarm of deputies and construction workers buzz around the building: clearing the rubbles off the sidewalk, carrying boxes around, managing the crowd of onlookers. Who blew up a small town’s police station? A dissatisfied customer? A police car pulled in and a man with a sheriff badge got out. Dean was almost past the station and could only glance at the man, but his attention was caught by the person who walked up to talk to him: it was Scott, Deaton’s so-called assistant. Wasn’t the kid supposed to be in school?

Dean couldn’t linger any longer—it was never good to be seen lurking by a police station—so he drove away, pondering what he’d just seen. He now remembered the articles about the Sheriff’s kid, and when he got back to his motel room he fired Sam’s computer again to look further into it. He found that the Sheriff’s son—oddly named Stiles Stilinsky, which had to count as child abuse somehow—had actually gone missing twice in a very quick succession: having vanished during the night, he was found in the woods by a FBI agent, and promptly ran away from the hospital. Then two days later, he simply came back to his father of his own will. All in all it was a weird story, but Dean wasn’t sure he should get interested in it, until his eyes caught on the words, _‘best friend Scott McCall._ ’ Scott McCall as in ‘Deaton’s assistant’ Scott?

Dean sat back on his chair. “Interesting.”

It would be too much of a coincidence if the Scott Dean had seen talking to the Sheriff wasn’t the same Scott who was his son’s best friend. It got even more interesting when Dean noticed that McCall was also the name of the FBI agent who’d found the Sheriff’s kid in the woods. 

After having wasted an hour reading online, Dean went for coffee again, and, even though it was a bit early for lunch, bought himself a sandwich to eat. Eating always did wonders for his thinking process. 

Chewing on bread and ham, Dean deliberated with himself: everything he’d found was interestingly coincidental, but the real question was whether he should get involved. He hadn’t come to Beacon Hills intending to work on a case, but if he decided to wait for Deaton then there was nothing else for him to do, and staying idle was a recipe for going crazy. Maybe there was nothing supernatural going on here, but if there was, then he needed to do something about it, and if this was what kept Deaton so busy, maybe he could help free the good doctor’s schedule so he would finally be available to work on Sam.

Dean drowned his last mouthful with coffee, his decision made. It all seemed to hinge around Scott McCall, so he was going to be the one Dean would focus on. He didn’t think he could risk interviewing anyone in his circle, in case Scott or Deaton had already warned them about him. So he’d just have to follow the kid around. 

Eventually, Scott had to go to school—surely one of the adults in his life would make him go—so Dean found out Scott’s address and stalked the closest of the two local high schools. He finally got lucky and saw Scott, flanked by two identical-looking buff teenagers, walk across the parking lot of the school. The three of them had motorbikes and drove like bats from hell—or like teenagers on high-powered engines—, which caused Dean to lose them a couple times. He caught up to them just in time to see them get into an apartment complex.

They stayed there all afternoon. Dean was used to stakeouts, but all the practice in the world didn’t make waiting in a car for hours any less boring, and he didn’t have his trusty sidekick with him to help pass the time. He went through half his tape collection, read the car magazine he’d fished from the glove compartment cover-to-cover three times. No distraction could keep his thoughts away from Sam. How was his brother doing? Had he managed to get some sleep, or had he degraded further? Sitting in his car, staring at the building Scott and his friends had entered until he almost bored holes into it, he couldn’t help but wonder if he was wasting his time. Maybe the kids were working on a school project or something, and afterward Scott would just go back home like a nice normal kid, and Dean would have lost his whole afternoon on a hunch. 

When he was starting to give up, Scott finally left the building, this time with a pretty Asian girl in tow. The girl, maybe Scott’s girlfriend if the constant smile on the boy’s face was any indication, climbed behind him on his motorbike. She was talking as she put on the helmet he had given her, looking serious and intent. When Scott took off, Dean hesitated before following them: it didn’t look like the kids were up to anything nefarious; what could be more normal than a teenage boy giving a ride on his motorbike to a girl he liked? Had Dean possessed a motorbike when he was in high school—impossible, because his dad considered them as engines of death, which was pretty ironical when you thought about the other components of Dean’s childhood—he would have done nothing but take girls on it. 

Still, it wasn’t like he had anything better to do for the moment, and he wanted to see where this would take him. If nothing suspicious happened tonight, he would lay off Scott McCall and figure things out a different way.

Later that night, he was rewarded for his patience: Scott and the girl spent a couple of hours at what Dean supposed was the girl’s house, then left again at an hour where no teenager with good intentions should be out on a school night.

“Bingo,” Dean murmured, drumming his fingers on the wheel with nervous pent-up energy. “What are you hiding, kids?”

They met with a bunch of other kids by the police station. Dean’s car was too conspicuous to be seen there again, so he parked a little down the street and went back on foot, trying to blend with the shadows, following the sounds of a hushed conversation. He was now pretty sure that the kids were up to no good, but he still couldn’t figure what they were going to do. Attack the police station? Did they have something to do with the bomb that went off a couple days ago?

Dean hid behind one of the police cars stationed behind the building. He wasn’t sure where any of the kids were and it was too dark for him to see much, so he listened out. It was a quiet town, not much traffic at this time of the night or many people out. Nothing to keep him from hearing the sounds of a fight, thuds and muffled groans and quick breathing, and he followed them out until he could see shadows moving, struggling next to the bulky shape of an armored car.

Then one of the shadows, a mountain of a man, straightened up and downright growled. As he sidled closer Dean saw that the man had glowing blue eyes and fangs. _Fucking werewolves._ Dean drew his gun immediately—he didn’t have any silver bullets, but even a werewolf took a moment to recover from being shot in the knee. 

The man collapsed sideways like a broken doll, an animal whimper wrenched out of him by the pain of the bullet. Dean ran the distance separating them, gun pointed at the man, and was about to shoot again when a steely voice said, “Don’t move.”

Dean stopped on instinct, because it was the kind of voice you obey, the kind that was backed up by a weapon of some sort. He angled his body toward the voice, glancing in the direction it had come from, but without taking his eyes completely off the groaning werewolf either.

He’d almost forgotten the teenagers, focused that he was on the straightforward threat, but now he could see them all lined up behind him like an execution squad: there was Scott, and the Asian girl, and the twins, and two other girls about the same age as the others—a red head in incongruous skirt and heels, and a brunette dressed all in black, her hair gathered to the top of her head. The brunette was pointing a crossbow at Dean like she knew how to use it, and was indubitably the one who’d just spoken. The twins—

“Oh, hell,” Dean said when he saw that the twins also showed glowing eyes and wicked fangs. Looked like he’d gotten himself invited to a fucking _werewolf_ party. Way to go, Dean.


	2. Chapter 2

Sam dropped heavily on his bed like he couldn’t keep standing any longer, but he could have just been trying to stall, giving himself time to think over his reaction to Stiles’ question. 

“What do you mean?” he finally asked. 

He looked exhausted, but Stiles had never seen him look any different, and he wasn’t letting any other emotion come through. His calm, contained behavior convinced Stiles that he wasn’t being totally paranoid, that there really was something fishy about the man, so he pushed further: “You know what I mean! I’m not asking you if you hunt cute woodland creatures in your free time. What I’m asking is—” He lowered his voice there, because who knew what could be lurking outside the door? “—are you a _hunter?_ You know. The kind that takes on creatures of the night.”

“Creatures of the night,” Sam said, his voice flat.

“Yes!” Stiles threw his hands up in the air. “You were acting weirdly CSI-like about that girl—”

“I could be working in law enforcement.”

“My dad is the Sheriff, okay? I know law enforcement, and you’re not it. You’re way too shady for that. Also, when I said ‘kanima’ and you repeated it—you don’t repeat a word that’s completely foreign to you that perfectly. You were saying it like you know what it means.”

Sam didn’t say anything for a long moment. His back stiffened, reacting to something that Stiles couldn’t hear or see, and then he sighed heavily. “Okay,” he said. “I’m a hunter.”

Stiles’ feeling of triumph at being right was short-lived: knowing that Sam was a hunter didn’t really tell him much about whether he could be trusted or not. He liked Allison, and her dad was okay, but for every Chris and Allison Stiles could raise you a Kate or a Gerard. What kind of hunter was Sam? Was he the kind who would cut Stiles’ best friend in halves without provocation?

“Do you know the Argents?”

Sam’s brow furrowed in a thoughtful expression. “Werewolf hunting family? I know of them, but I don’t think I’ve ever met any of them in person.”

“What’s your stance on werewolves?”

“Do you mean do I know how to kill them?”

“No! I mean, do you think they should all be killed for being disgusting unnatural beasts, even if they’ve never hurt anyone?”

Sam flinched, but Stiles wasn’t sure if it was because of the question or because of the ghosts in his head.

“My brother and I don’t kill creatures who’ve never hurt anyone,” Sam said. He wasn’t looking at Stiles; his eyes were directed inward, staring at some unpleasantness in his mind. “But werewolves can’t help themselves.”

“But what if they could? What if they could prove to you that they could?”

“Like I said, we don’t kill anything that’s harmless. But—” 

Sam’s eyes had regained some light, and he was now looking at Stiles with curiosity. Stiles felt a sudden surge of discomfort—he’d been so intent on finding out whether Sam and his yet-to-be-named brother were a danger to his friends that he hadn’t thought about himself. He no longer was a harmless human being whose only defenses were his quick wit and sharp tongue—the clandestine passenger in his head was definitely unnatural, and disgusting, and extremely harmful. The whole combo. Any hunter worth their salt would want to kill him.

“How do you know about all this?” Sam asked. “Are you an Argent?”

Stiles snorted. “God, no. I’ve had a number of more or less fortunate encounters with members of that family. One of them is even my friend, but overall they’re kind of a nasty bunch.”

“Are you a werewolf?” Sam still looked calm, but his posture had subtly changed and some tension showed through in it.

“No!”

“But you’re friends with werewolves, right? You’re trying to protect them.”

Stiles scowled. Someone whose brain was being eaten away by insomnia should not be allowed to be this perceptive.

“What about your thing?” he asked in retaliation, spinning a finger to his temple. “The voices in your head. Is it a natural problem, or a supernatural one?”

“Supernatural. He—” Sam tapped his own temple. “—is a residue from a bad experience.”

The way Sam casually called the voices—or rather _voice_ , in the singular—a _he_ froze the blood in Stiles’ veins. 

“Are you sure that—“ He had to pause to swallow. “—that _residue_ can’t take over and—”

“No!” Sam shook his head fiercely, but it looked too much like denial for Stiles’ taste, and not enough like the calm, rational response supported by strong arguments that he would’ve liked. “No,” Sam repeated. “He’s not real. He’s just a memory. He _can’t_ —”

“Okay, okay.” Stiles raised his hands, palms out in surrender. “Just asking.”

He sat down too, mirroring Sam’s position on his own bed. He suddenly felt like a wet blanket had been thrown over his shoulders, weighted down by exhaustion. His head hurt, but he couldn’t stop the thoughts whirling around in his mind. What were the chances of two guys with their brains scrambled by the supernatural becoming roommates in a mental institution? It sounded like the beginning of a bad joke. Regardless of whether Stiles trusted Sam the hunter or not, he certainly didn’t trust the thing in Sam’s head. He sagged in on himself under the invisible burden, burying his face in his hands. The pressure felt good on his aching head and he sighed in relief.

“You should try to take a nap,” Sam said.

Stiles looked at him through his fingers. “Are you kidding me?”

“Well, it can’t hurt to try.”

If only. It actually could hurt, very much, and a lot of people, which reminded Stiles that Sam would be first line and he didn’t even know about it. Stiles should tell him. He didn’t trust Sam not to hurt his friends who’d done nothing to deserve it—Sam didn’t look the sadistic type, but Stiles was wary of Sam’s belief that werewolves couldn’t help hurting people—but _he_ wasn’t that innocent. And what could Sam do to him, anyway? If he’d gone through the same procedure that Stiles had, they’d asked him to empty his pocket and had taken his belt. Sam should be harmless.

Stiles lowered his hands on his lap, clenching his fists. He was steeling himself to tell Sam the whole story, when the door to their room opened and an orderly Stiles didn’t know said to Sam, “You’ve got an appointment with Dr. Krakow. Come on.”

Sam stood up with such obvious weariness that Stiles thought it was cruel and unusual of the doctor not to dispense him of this appointment. Especially since, if Sam had told the truth, there was nothing a psychiatrist could do to help him.

“Have fun!” he said, and Sam gave him a tired half-smile.

Stiles would just have to chill and wait until Sam was back before he spilled his guts. Hopefully not literally.

\---

“Mr. Wesson? Mr. Wesson!”

It was the urgency in the voice rather than the name itself that got Sam’s attention. Only a second later did his brain caught up to the fact that the name was supposed to be his. 

“Yeah? Uh, sorry.”

Dr. Krakow, a potbellied man with a kind round face, looked at Sam over his half-moon glasses. 

“Having trouble focusing?”

“I haven’t slept in five days,” Sam said a little irritably. “So yes, I have trouble focusing.”

It wasn’t the man’s fault if he was feeling on edge, but to hear him comment on the obvious was like going to the eye doctor and have them say, “so you have problems with your eyes, huh?” Besides, there was nothing the man could do for him, and Sam’s thoughts kept straying to the conversation he’d just had with Stiles. He didn’t look like a bad kid, but it was now more obvious than ever that he was hiding something.

“Told you!” Lucifer said. “Or least, I hinted very strongly at it. Didn’t you get my hints?”

He was standing behind the doctor and had been killing the man in various gruesome ways since the beginning of the appointment. Right now, Dr. Krakow’s face was veiled over with blood from having the top of his head sawed off. Sam’s mind must be starting to crack under the combined pressure of the insomnia and hallucinations, because he actually found the vision more amusing than horrifying: despite the graphic realism of these illusions, the doctor’s tone of voice never varied from practiced calm and evenness, and the contrast was pretty funny. 

But, right, Stiles. What could he be hiding? He was obviously protecting people, but there must be something else, something that touched him personally. And how much faith could Sam put in what he’d said about werewolves? He’d looked like he believed it, but Sam knew all about the great lengths of delusions you could go to protect someone you loved. On the other hand, if he was right, it meant that maybe Sam hadn’t needed to kill Madison. 

Meanwhile, the doctor kept droning on about sedatives and other kinds of medications he could give Sam. No sedative had worked so far on him, but Sam felt too tired to point it out, and it was also possible that the doctor had access to stronger stuff than he did, even counting the raids Dean had made on free clinics.

“Mr. Wesson? Are you listening?”

“Yeah, I’m just a bit preoccupied.”

The doctor’s face softened like a melting ball of wax. “Were you there for the—incident?”

 _Is that how we call it?_ “Yeah. I saw what happened. How is the—is he dead?”

“No, the cut wasn’t very deep and he was taken care of immediately. He’ll be fine,” the doctor said reassuringly, as if he wanted to soothe what he perceived as Sam’s distress.

Sam wasn’t feeling distressed at all—he actually felt rather intrigued—but if a distraught patient was going to keep the doctor talking, he wasn’t above playing the part.

“I heard that there was another suicide two days ago. I chose to come here because I wanted help, but—”

“This place doesn’t make people suicidal, if that’s what you’re getting at.” The doctor’s voice had taken on an edge, and the way his plump fingers played with his pen betrayed some nervousness. “We do our best to help our patients, but sometimes it’s not enough. You also have to _want_ to be helped,” he added pointedly. 

“So these patients were beyond help?”

“I’m not at liberty to discuss other patients. I’m sure you can understand that.”

“Of course.”

The brief rush of adrenaline caused by the topic had ebbed and Sam was once again too tired to hold a coherent conversation, much less one about his mental health. Dr. Krakow must have perceived that, because soon enough Sam was led back to his room, feeling like he was floating on a cushion of air all the way there. Even Lucifer sounded distant, a familiar echo in the background. The only thing that almost startled him from his daze was running into a teenager, a lanky kid with long hair who glowered at him before stomping off, muttering under his breath. 

When Sam entered his room, trying to gather the scattered pieces of his mind and think of how to resume his conversation with Stiles, he found the kid laying on his back over the covers, his eyes closed and his face slack from sleep.

For a moment Sam just watched him, feeling sick with envy. Soon enough, though, he noticed that Stiles’ sleep looked far from peaceful. “Let me…let me out…” the boy was murmuring, head tossing from side to side. 

Sam took a step in direction of the bed, wondering if he should shake him awake or let him catch up on some much needed sleep, but Stiles took the decision off his hands by waking up violently, gasping for breath, a cry dying on his lips. 

“Wow, hey, you okay?” Sam asked, hands put out in case the flailing boy fell off the bed.

Stiles’ panicked eyes roved around the room. “Did I, did I—was I sleeping?” He seemed to have trouble catching his breath.

“I just came in, but it looked like it.”

“Oh my god! This is so bad. So very bad, oh god. Can you look at my back, please?”

“What?”

“Here—” Stiles was frantically tugging at the collar of his t-shirt, twisting his neck trying to look at the back of his shoulder. “I can’t—I can’t see it. Can you check, _please_?”

Moved by the distress in the boy’s voice, Sam obeyed and leaned in to examine the exposed part of his skin. At first he could see nothing but pale skin and a few scattered moles, so he pulled a little more at Stiles’ collar so he could look further down his back, and then he saw what he’d managed to catch a glimpse of before: red lines running down Stiles’ back, jagged lines that formed a web reminiscent of a bolt of lightning.

“You have a… something there,” Sam said, unsure what Stiles wanted him to check. 

He obviously knew the mark was there—he’d called it a scar earlier—but why was he so panicked about it? The mark looked strange, though, like no scar Sam had ever seen, but more… A Lichtenberg figure, right; Sam’d never seen one anywhere but in a picture, but the lines on Stiles’ back looked just liked he’d been hit by lightning.

“How does it look? Like the color—are the lines an angry red, or are they faded? Does it go up to my neck?”

“Kind of faded, I guess. And no, I can’t see anything on your neck.”

Sam had expected this piece of news to be a good one, or at least for Stiles’ anxiety to ease a little. Instead Stiles immediately backed away from Sam, pushing him at the same time with trembling hands like he was doubly in a hurry to put space between them.

“How long were you gone?” he asked Sam.

“I—” It was hard to measure time with the permanent fog blurring his mind and the way he kept drifting off. “I’m not sure. Not for very long, I don’t think.”

Stiles closed his eyes, murmuring a fervent litany of ‘ _fuck, fuck, fuck_ ’ under his breath. Then he opened his eyes again and said, “Okay.”

“Okay what?”

“I gotta tell you something, because you’re my roommate for now and it’s only fair you know what you’re sharing space with.” Stiles’ fingers played nervously with the hem of his t-shirt as he talked, and a sense of foreboding dread grew in Sam. He didn’t like Stiles using the word _what_ very much. “You’re a hunter, right?”

“I think we’ve already established that much,” Sam said warily. He caught a glimpse of Lucifer watching the conversation with an intent expression, and it only made his apprehension greater. 

“Have you heard of a nogitsune?”

“Sounds Japanese, but other than that I don’t have a clue.” Bobby would’ve known, Sam thought with a pang. “But I’m guessing _you_ know what it is.”

“It’s Japanese alright. It’s a fox spirit. It’s—” Stiles swallowed hard, Adam’s apple bobbing up and down with it. “Bad. Very evil. It’s also in there,” he added, pressing a finger to his temple. 

“You mean, in _you_? Like possession?”

“Yeah, exactly like that. I mean, I’m myself right now. I think. I _feel_ like myself, although it’s a version of myself that’s been stretched very thin, and I don’t know how longer I can... But the nogitsune has taken over a few times. Last time I was under for two days, and it used me to do… stuff.” 

Stiles’ voice was thin and raspy, like every word hurt and it was a wearying struggle to get them out. Sam held his breath, waiting for the rest and trying not to think of his hands stained with blood, his own fists pummeling his brother’s face. Even Lucifer was silent.

“Deaton—he’s a friend—injected me with something that’s keeping the nogitsune… asleep, I guess? But it’s not permanent, and Miss Morrell, the woman I was talking to earlier, told me I shouldn’t sleep, because it makes it easier for the spirit to take over again. And she also said that when the mark will have faded completely, it’ll mean that it’s back. Believe me, you don’t want it to be back.”

Stiles finally met Sam’s eyes—he looked young, pale, and weary, but his eyes held a steadfast determination. 

“You need to keep an eye on that mark.” Before Sam could remark on the fact that the mark was generally hidden by his shirt, Stiles added, “You just ask me if you can have a look at it, and if I say no…then you’ll know I’m not me anymore. There won’t be any other clue—this thing fooled my dad and my best friend before. I can still act like myself and be the nogitsune.”

That was a chilling thought. “And if you’re not you, then I…”

“You tell Miss Morrell, and she’ll handle the rest. This woman has ice in her veins. She’ll do what she has to.” Stiles shuddered.

Sam had been hunting long enough not to need an explanation on what “she’ll handle it” meant, and in theory he even agreed with that course of action. He remembered all too well what it felt like to be in Stiles’ position. Still, it was sobering to be casually discussing a teenager’s death with the interested party himself.

Stiles looked over to him. “I don’t want to be used to hurt people again,” he said, obviously misinterpreting Sam’s silence. “And he will. That’s all he wants, pain and chaos. He’ll hurt the people I love. _Again_. He made me—twist a sword into my best friend’s gut, for fuck’s sake.”

Sam absently noted how Stiles had gone from calling the nogitsune a _it_ to a _he_ , but something else in what Stiles had said struck him with a one-second delay. “You killed your best friend?”

“No, I—uh, he got better. It wasn’t like a sword _sword_ , it was more of—”

 _Werewolf_ , Sam understood immediately. It made sense that Stiles would be protective of werewolves if his closest friend was one. But Sam didn’t have the energy to worry about a potential werewolf threat roaming the streets of Beacon Hills when he had a possessed teenage boy on his hands already. A possessed boy who got locked in a room at night with him.

“—something like a knife, or—”

“Stiles, it’s fine. If your friend’s a werewolf, there’s nothing I can do about it from here anyway.”

Stiles narrowed his eyes. “He’s _not_ dangerous.” He’d sounded apathetic about his own death, but he was all fire now. “He’s never hurt anyone! Look, I’ve spent plenty of full moons with him by now, and he’s totally safe. I mean, the guy’s a boy scout! I stabbed him, and the first thing he said when I told him I was getting committed was, ‘I can’t protect you if you’re in here.’ Protect _me_. Like I’m not the one who—” Stiles cut himself off abruptly.

“Okay,” Sam said, more because Stiles looked upset than because he was convinced. Love gave you blinders, and the nature of lycanthropy made it possible for Stiles’ friend to both be a blood-thirsty monster a few nights a month, and a devoted friend the rest of the time.

“How do you think Dean’s doing out there?” Lucifer commented, the sound of his voice startling Sam because he’d been so silent during the conversation. “Nah, I’m sure he’s fine. He can handle werewolves. You, on the other hand, are in a tight spot, my boy. What are you gonna do about this? Gonna slit the boy’s throat as he… oh, but he doesn’t sleep, does he.”

 _You knew_ , Sam thought, but kept himself from saying it out loud. From the moment they got there, Lucifer had acted as if he knew something about Stiles that Sam didn’t, which didn’t make sense if he was only a figment of Sam’s imagination. He could be a manifestation of things Sam had observed subconsciously, but there was no way Sam’s subconscious could have picked up on what was wrong with Stiles upon their first meeting. If the Lucifer in his mind could have independent knowledge and thoughts, then could he be—

Sam spent most of his time avoiding looking at Lucifer as much as he could, but this time he looked straight at him, in time to see Lucifer’s lips form a slow smile. 

“Howdy, partner,” said the Devil. 

“Sam? You okay?”

It must have looked to Stiles as though he was staring at nothing.

“I’m fine,” Sam said faintly. 

Neither he nor Stiles could trust what was in their minds. They’d both thought they could be safe in Eichen House, but the truth was, neither of them was safe anywhere. 

\---

“Who are you?” the girl with the crossbow asked Dean.

On his periphery, the blue-eyed werewolf he’d shot made a move as though he was going to get back on his feet, and Dean shot his other knee. The werewolf went down again with a half-growl, half-whimper.

“Hey!” Scott McCall exclaimed. “You didn’t need to—”

“He a friend of yours?”

“No! But—”

“Scott,” murmured the red-haired girl. “You know what we need.”

Next to her, the girl with the crossbow turned her weapon back on Dean—she’d shifted her aim on the werewolf just a fraction second before Dean himself had fired. He had no doubt that she would’ve shot if he hadn’t; she couldn’t be a werewolf, or she wouldn’t need to be armed. The only thing that made sense was that she was a hunter, but what would she be doing with a bunch of werewolves?

Scott, for his part, looked chastised by his friend’s comment. His expression hardened, lips pressing tight, and there was that look on his face again, the desperate determination Dean had read in his eyes at the clinic. He looked at Dean, and his face was so expressive that Dean couldn’t miss the moment the boy recognized him.

“You were at Deaton’s earlier today.”

“Yeah. Name’s Dean Winchester.” 

He glanced at the maybe hunter girl to see if she showed any recognition at the sound of his name, but her face was unreadable.

“What do you want?” Scott asked.

“I want Deaton’s help. For my brother.” If he was correct about Scott, then it couldn’t hurt to tug at the heartstrings. “He’s in a very bad way, but Deaton told me he was too busy to help, and I could tell pretty quickly that there’s something off about this town. It’s kind of my job to tell.”

This time crossbow girl reacted. “You’re a hunter?” Her voice was tight rather than relaxed or hopeful, and she didn’t lower her crossbow one inch.

“Yeah. Are you? That’s a mean-looking crossbow you got there.”

“My name’s Allison Argent,” she said, like it was all the introduction she needed. 

And, indeed, after Dean had turned the name over in his mind for a few seconds, he remembered where he’d heard it before. “Werewolf hunter? But—” 

The twins were still half-transformed, but the Argent girl was the only one of the group that was armed, so it left Dean wondering about Scott and the other two girls. Were they all werewolves too? What was a girl raised in a werewolf hunting family doing with werewolves? In Dean’s experience, families who specialized in a specific kind of hunting tended to be a special brand of fanatics. 

“Allison!” the red-haired girl shouted suddenly, and it was all the warning Dean got before the werewolf he’d shot crashed into his side. 

Dean brutally met the ground and the shock made him lose one or two seconds of awareness. When he came back to himself, it took all his strength and focus to keep an enraged werewolf off his face. He’d lost his gun in the scuffle, and the man was large and heavy in top of possessing a werewolf’s unnatural strength. Just when the fangs had snapped a little too close to his nose, the weight was lifted off of him and Dean managed to get up to his knees. 

“Jesus,” he cursed, trying to catch his breath. 

When he looked around him to assess the situation, he saw that his previous question had been answered: Scott’s face had morphed, sideburns spreading until they covered half of his cheeks, and fangs had grown in his mouth. His eyes gleamed a bright red. 

The twins were holding the blue-eyed werewolf down to his knees, and one of them asked Scott, “Do we kill him?”

The girls had gathered around Scott and were looking at him—waiting, Dean realized, for his decision. They were all acting as though this earnest-looking teenager was their _leader._

“No,” Scott said, his voice soft but decisive. “That’s not what we do. There’s only one thing we want. Where’s Katashi’s finger?” he asked the defeated werewolf.

The man’s eyes had reverted to a normal, non-descript color, and he was looking up at the teenager with an expression of surprise mixed with wariness. 

“Breast pocket,” he eventually said, and Scott leaned over to fish something silvery from the pocket.

Dean got back to his feet, and, feeling curious, took a few steps to better see what it was. He had the time to see that it was indeed a finger, or at least a fake finger made out of silver, before the girl with the crossbow whirled on him, pointing her weapon at Dean’s chest.

“Woah,” Dean said, hands up in a surrender gesture.

“Don’t move,” the girl commanded.

“Allison,” Scott said. “It’s okay.” Allison lowered her crossbow, but kept her eyes on Dean, warily tracking his every movement.

“Scott,” said Scott’s maybe girlfriend, the one he’d taken on his bike. “What are we going to do with him?” She shot a nervous glance in Dean’s direction. “He, um.”

One of the twins huffed, and that kick-started a debate on whether or not they should kill their prisoner: both the twins were fervently of the opinion that a good enemy is a dead enemy, but Scott stayed firm in his opposition. The girls didn’t speak, but seemed to lean toward Scott’s position. In the end, they let the man go, and Dean was left with the clear impression that for all the twins’ protestations, Scott’s opinion was the one that weighted the most, and that the final decision had been his.

“Now, what do we do with him,” the red-haired girl said coolly, pointing at Dean. She stood close to Allison, either for protection or support.

Scott directed his attention at Dean, not hostile but still cautious. “You followed us?” he asked.

Dean pondered his answer, and decided to tell the truth. He was on his guard, but he didn’t feel in danger: the werewolf they’d let go had fought against them, and they’d spared him. Dean hadn’t done anything to them; he’d even stepped in to help. That would count for something, hopefully.

“Yeah,” he said nonchalantly. “Sorry,” he added, although he probably didn’t sound very sorry. “What’s the finger for?” 

The question seemed to remind Scott what he had in his hand. He opened his closed fist and tapped the object against his palm. Something fell from it, something too small for Dean to be able to see what it was, and Scott clutched it protectively in his hand. He was smiling, looking relieved and accomplished.

“Something we need,” he said.

“Deaton said that you were upset because your pet was about to be put down.” It was provocation on his part to bring that up, because he’d never really believed that story. Scott clenched his jaws and Dean said, “Guess it’s not true. Who’re you trying to save?”

“My best friend.” The words held a depth of feeling in them.

“The Sheriff’s kid?”

Scott’s eyes widened. “How do you know that?”

“Checked the news. Again, this is kind of my job.”

“Why so inquisitive?” the red head cut in, tilting her head to examine him. “What do you want?”

“To help.” The answer surprised Dean almost as much as it did the kids; he hadn’t really worked out what he was going to do until now, until he’d seen the determined set of Scott’s jaws, a determination that was reflected in the group gathered around him. “Helping you will get help for my brother to come faster. Plus, it’s what I do.”

“Maybe we should—” the Asian girl said, her voice wavering a bit with hesitation. “I mean, help’s good, right? And he’s a hunter—like Allison.”

“Oh, Kira. You obviously haven’t met the rest of Allison’s family,” the red head said sardonically. 

Allison didn’t seem to take offense to what her friend had just said. In fact, she was the one who looked the most distrustful of Dean. It wasn’t difficult to get why: a hunter kid consorting with werewolves, no doubt her family hadn’t been happy about it. She was protective of her friends. Dean wasn’t overjoyed with the whole werewolf business himself, but he had to admit that these kids were behaving like no werewolves he’d ever seen. They seemed to be in control of the transformation and didn’t act particularly enraged. The twins appeared to be the most bloodthirsty of the lot, and Dean silently vowed to keep an eye on them. 

“Scott,” Allison said after a moment. “Can I talk to you?”

“Sure,” Scott said, sounding a bit confused.

“In private.”

Scott and Allison stepped apart to confer, leaving Dean with the rest of the gang eyeing him warily—Kira was the only one who tried to be friendly, shooting him quick, cautious smiles. Dean smiled back at her, and maybe it came out a little too flirtatious, because the red-haired girl glared daggers at him in return.

Allison and Scott’s discussion was conducted in heated whispers, and Dean strained to catch a few words: “— _want to kill him_ —”

He wasn’t sure if they were talking about him or about someone else entirely, but he swept his eyes over the ground searching for his gun, finding it a couple of feet away. It wasn’t very likely that he’d manage to trump werewolf reflexes if they decided to attack him, but it didn’t hurt to prepare himself.

Scott returned from the discussion looking somber, and Dean braced himself for a fight.

“Thank you for offering to help,” Scott said, sounding distant in a way that contrasted with before. “But we won’t need it. With what we got tonight, we have it under control.” His jeans pocket was bulged with the shape of his clenched fist.

“Okay,” Dean said amiably. They might be kids, but they outnumbered him and it wasn’t the right time for him to get into it. “Can I get my gun back, though?”

He went to pick up his gun from the ground under the teenagers’ watchful eyes, and walked away feeling that intent stare on the back of his neck like a warm ray of sunlight. He only relaxed once he thought he was out of sight.

\---

Stiles thought he was starting to feel a little bit better—for a certain value of better, anyway. A bit more centered, at least, not quite as shaken by his dream. _Let me in. Let me IN!_

“Stiles?” Sam called, and Stiles almost jumped out of his skin.

Okay, so he wasn’t totally fine, but who would be, in his situation? And the dream—well, it was hard not to be shaken when he knew it wasn’t really a dream per se, but the manifestation of the nogitsune pounding on the metaphorical doors of his mind. Stiles’ whole frame shook from a violent shudder at the thought, almost a spasm.

“Are you okay?” Sam asked.

Stiles glanced over to him: the man looked like he’d been taken for a spin then spat out by a washing machine. 

“Right back at you, buddy,” Stiles mumbled, and Sam snorted, before carefully lying back down on his bed.

Stiles was still dead tired, but he wasn’t afraid of falling asleep again right now, because he felt like ants had taken residence under his skin, making him restless and jittery. He managed to remain silent for a grand total of thirty seconds. “Hey, you’re a big bad hunter, right?”

Maybe it wasn’t very prudent to bait a man like him, but Sam simply said, “I have my moments.”

“How do you deal with possession?”

Stiles was staring at a spot on the wall in front of him and not looking in Sam’s direction, but he heard a soft rustle of sheets when Sam shifted on his bed. “Exorcism, generally,” Sam eventually answered. “But I’m used to another kind of possession, and… I’m not sure it would work on you. I’m pretty sure it wouldn’t, actually.”

Stiles let out a sigh, his shoulders sagging with the exhalation. “Yeah, I didn’t think so.”

Next time, he was able to hold out for a whole minute. “Wonder what’s going on out there. I mean, we’ve been stuck in here for hours—”

“It’s been twenty minutes at most.”

“—and now the group therapy has been cancelled but no one even came to tell me, it’s like—It’s like they’ve decided to let us _rot_ in our cells.”

He was aware he was being a bit overdramatic, but he couldn’t help himself. Babbling whatever paranoid thought was going through his mind at the moment was the only thing that kept him from unraveling completely. Unable to sit down any longer, he got to his feet, and had to pause for a second when the change of station made him light-headed. He started pacing the length of their room, talking as he moved, “I feel like there’s something going on in this place. Other than, I mean—” He stopped then, thinking, _other than me._ Sam had told him the guy who’d tried to kill himself had survived, but that didn’t make the incident any less unsettling. “Anyway.” He resumed his pacing. “The girl we found. I’m not a doctor, but I don’t think that whatever happened to her was natural.”

“The doctor,” Sam said hoarsely. He cleared his throat, a weak sound that closely resembled a dying wheeze. “The doctor who saw me, he looked—worried, I guess. He was trying not to show it, but I think they’re keeping us in our rooms for our protection.”

 _Protection_. At least if he was locked up, Stiles thought, then other people would be protected from _him_. Well, except for Sam, who looked like he was dying anyway. And that was hoping a simple door would be enough to stop the nogitsune. 

“Right,” Stiles said. He was making himself dizzy with his pacing, but he had the feeling that if he stopped moving he would just collapse. “ _Something_ ’s going on. You know, when we saw the girl turn around the corner right before we found her, I kind of had a weird feeling. You saw her, right?”

“I did. But you and me aren’t very good judges of what’s real or not right now.”

“Yeah, I guess. We’re quite the broken pair. Still—”

Exclamations broke out in the hallway, interrupting him. _Help! Somebody help me!_ This was getting familiar enough that instead of startling, Stiles stiffened, thinking, _what now?_

“Did you—?” Sam said hesitantly.

“Yes.”

Stiles went to the still locked door and futilely shook the handle. Then he pressed his ear against the surface of the door, straining to listen.

“Can you—”

Stiles waved his hand imperiously at Sam. “Sshh!”

_Ben! Come on, dude, wake up…_

Stiles didn’t know who Ben was, but he recognized the voice as one of the orderlies’. 

_What….found him like that.….like that girl…_

Stiles straightened up, a hand pressed against the door to keep his balance. _Like that girl…_

“I think they found another body. Sounds like it’s one of the orderlies, this time.”

Sam wasn’t saying anything, so Stiles looked over to him and found the man staring at an empty spot by the window.

“Hey, Sam. Dude, come on, don’t space out on me.”

Sam blinked, and it seemed like it took forever before he could focus on Stiles. “Sorry. You were saying?”

Stiles repeated what he’d heard, and Sam said, “Whatever it is, it looks like it’s loose in the hospital.”

“Well, that’s cheerful, thank you so much for sharing. So, what do we do?”

Sam closed his eyes. “There’s not much we can do, is there? Not as long as we’re locked in that room.” He opened his eyes and started pushing himself into a sitting position. It was excruciating to watch him, and Stiles felt oddly guilty for it, like he had somehow forced Sam to move. “If I had something, like a paperclip,” Sam said, “then I could pick the lock.”

Stiles had no reason to have a paperclip on him, but he still turned around his pockets to check. “Yeah, so that’s a bust.”

He walked from the door to the window, more because he needed to move than to check the view: the only thing they could see from their window was a stretch of the front lawn and a few trees, their foliage swaying slightly from a breath of wind.

Stiles pressed his forehead against the glass. The cool helped a little with his headache. “Damn it. We need to get out of here. We—”

As if he’d just made a wish to the stars and his prayer had been answered, the door opened and Judith came in. 

“Stiles,” she said. She looked disapproving, like he was breaking some kind of rule by looking through the window. “Group therapy, now.”

“Now? It was supposed to be—”

“It’s now.”

Stiles shared a look with Sam, trying to pass the thought, _if I don’t come back, tell my dad I love him._ Sam blinked at him, which Stiles chose to take as a yes.

As he was led to the room where the group therapy would take place, Stiles tried to be on the lookout for clues about what had just happened, but it looked like maybe Judith was keeping him away—accidentally or on purpose—from the crime scene, because he couldn’t see anything wrong. Although, if they’d merely found another unconscious person, it was likely there just wasn’t anything left to see.

“Stiles,” Judith said at some point in a warning tone.

“What?” he said, aiming for his best impersonation of wide-eyed innocence.

“Just keep to yourself,” she said. He’d never been that good at wide-eyed innocence.

The room where Judith took him was the same as the day before: luminous, the late morning sunlight flowing into it through the large arched windows, and as wide as a ballroom. Miss Morrell looked sleek as ever, and she even smiled at him when their eyes met—who would think that behind that pretty façade, she was probably assessing whether or not he needed to be put down yet? 

The discussion ran around the same topics as the day before, so it was essentially a dissection of just how bad they were feeling today. Stiles had a hard time keeping up with the conversation, and very little motivation to do so—he had the chance to experience first hand just how bad he was feeling and didn’t need a rehash of it, thank you very much—and instead he tried to observe the other participants without being too conspicuous about it. 

He thought the group was mostly constituted of the same people as yesterday, except for Oliver being gone, but to be perfectly honest he hadn’t been paying a lot of attention to the group then, so he wasn’t sure. Malia was there, crouched on her chair like a cat about to pounce. She’d given him a look when he’d entered the room, but Stiles thought it wasn’t quite as murderous as the looks she’d given him before, so she was probably getting used to him. There was also, what’s her name, _Meredith_ , the scarecrow-like girl who he’d heard talk on a phone that didn’t work. She kept looking at him like she expected him to attack, like she _knew_ , and it made Stiles more than a little uncomfortable.

 _How does guilt make you feel, Stiles?_ Morrell had asked the day before.

Nervous, he thought again. Yeah, nervous as fuck, like he was going to jump out of his own skin—which would be a definite improvement on his current condition.

Other than those two, Stiles didn’t know the names of the other members of the group, and only vaguely remembered having seen them before, so he kept an ear out for Miss Morrell calling for them until he knew who each was. There was a black girl who kept twisting the fabric of her sweatshirt—Amy—and a bulky white guy who looked bored out of his mind—Kyle—and another white boy with long dark hair who seemed to be one step away from breaking out shouting at the group. His name was Jordan, which for some reason rang familiar to Stiles, and he looked like one of those kids involved in school shootings. Hell, maybe he was. Although, would he be in Eichen House if he’d really shot at his teachers and classmates? Wouldn’t he be somewhere more… secure?

“Stiles? Stiles.” It was Miss Morrell, her voice tinged with the slightest edge of impatience.

“What?”

“What about you?”

Stiles leaned forward with his elbows on his knees, looking up to Miss Morrell’s expectant face. He’d obviously missed a question directed at him and wouldn’t be able to hide that he hadn’t been paying attention. It wasn’t a rare occurrence for him, but this time he felt a hard-edged annoyance cut through him. Who was she anyway, his math teacher? He wanted to tell her not to pretend to care about him when she wanted to kill him. Couldn’t she just leave him be until it was time for her to inject him with poison?

“What about me?” he asked through gritted teeth.

“We were talking about what happened: the attempted suicide, the two people who have been founded unconscious in the hallways. Did you witness or hear any of it? How do you feel about it?”

“I was there for the, uh, attempted suicide. I heard about the other two. You know, the echoes. It’s, well, it’s awful.”

A murmur of assent ran through the group. Stiles was feeling more curious than annoyed, now—he wasn’t sure if Miss Morrell’s inquiry genuinely aimed at helping the group, or if she was trying to gather clues, but whatever her intentions were, Stiles was much more interested in what the others had to say than before. 

“Adam was my roommate for a while,” Kyle said. “He was screwy.”

“Kyle,” Miss Morrell said with cool disapproval.

Malia snorted. “Listen to yourself,” she said. “We’re all screwy here. Sorry,” she added for Miss Morrell’s benefit, although she didn’t sound very sorry. She probably didn’t have a lot practice with the sentiment.

“I saw Ben,” Amy piped up. “Leaving the common room, right before I heard all the shouting.”

“That’s impossible!” Jordan exclaimed, so loud he made Amy jump in startled fear. “He couldn’t have gone from the common room to where he was found, it’s too far. You mixed him up with someone else.”

“No,” Amy said, her fists clenching on her stretched-out sweatshirt. “I’m sure it was him.”

“You’re wrong! You—”

“Jordan, calm down,” Miss Morrell said. 

She didn’t raise her voice, but her words were laced with an authority that wasn’t to be trifled with. Even Jordan, as angry as he seemed to be, must have heard it because he shut his mouth and went back to silent scowling, arms crossed over his chest. 

“I _saw_ him,” Amy mumbled mulishly. Jordan glared at her, but was kept from replying by Miss Morrell’s sharp change of topic. Stiles just tuned them all out again until Morrell declared the session had come to an end.

The group shuffled out of the room, but Stiles wasn’t particularly surprised when Morrell stopped him from leaving with a crisp, “Stiles! Do you have a moment, please?”

Stiles gave a forlorn look to Malia’s back, the last one to leave the room. When the door was closed behind her, Stiles turned to Miss Morrell, and, before she could ask her question, said, “It’s fading, but still there. I’m still hanging on, yay.” He made a fist and half-heartedly pumped it in the air.

Miss Morrell sighed. “I was going to ask you if you knew anything about what happened. Anything you wouldn’t say in front of the group.”

“Oh, um.” _I’m doing it just as you said_. “Well, my roommate and I actually found the girl in the hallways, but we… Well, we were worried someone would think we’d done something to her. We saw her turn the corner right before we found her body. Kind of like…” He swept his eyes around the room, but they were still alone. “Kind of like what Amy was telling about Ben.”

“Amy wasn’t lying,” Miss Morrell murmured, sounding like she wasn’t so much talking to Stiles as to herself. “She’s not the only to have seen Ben, and other people have seen Lisa, the first victim.”

“Well, that’s—peculiar.”

“It is none of your concern, though.” Miss Morrell looked back at Stiles with sharp eyes. “You look terrible,” she commented.

“If you tell me I need to get more sleep, I _will_ punch you, you know.”

She didn’t crack a smile. Maybe he hadn’t really sounded like he was joking.

“One way or the other,” she said, “it will soon be over.”

He felt the blood in his veins turn into ice. “Thanks for the pep talk, I guess,” he said, his voice coming out squeaky and breathless.

Maybe he should have told her about what Adam had said, about the potential danger lurking there. But despite everything his sense of self-preservation was still kicking, and Morrell’s clinical way to look at him made him want to run for the hills.

\---

Soon after Stiles came back from his group therapy, they were served lunch. It was somewhat ruined for Sam by the maggots he could see crawling across the tray and over the food.

Stiles, who was pushing his own food around his plate, asked him, “You’re not hungry?” 

“No, not really,” Sam said, trying not to puke. The maggots eventually disappeared, but the food still looked unappetizing. 

None of them being up for eating, they started discussing what Stiles had learned during therapy.

“Could be a shapeshifter, I guess,” Sam said. He lay back in his bed after having pushed his food to the side.

“A shapeshifter. What kind of shapeshifter? Werewolves count as shapeshifters, don’t they?”

“I mean a creature who can make itself look like whoever it wants. My brother and I have crossed paths with a few.”

“Okay, but since we saw Lisa, and other people saw Lisa, does that mean that there are several shapeshifters wandering around?” Stiles asked. “Because that’s a scary thought. And what the hell are they trying to do?”

“Yeah, that’s the problem. The shapeshifters we’ve met before were very human in their motives, but there doesn’t seem to be a purpose to what’s going on here. Also, what exactly happened to those people? Shapeshifters don’t have other abilities than their shapeshifting one, as far as I know.”

“Then what could it be? What’s causing this? What is _this_ , even? I should have asked Morrell about how the people who were injured are doing. Are they asleep, or in a coma, or what? Those open eyes were creepy as fuck.”

“Hmm.” Sam tried to think of everything he knew about doppelgängers. Thinking was hard, and made harder by Lucifer’s off-key singing, but there was something soothing about the intellectual exercise. “You know,” he said, “maybe we’re looking at this wrong.”

“What do you mean?”

“Maybe the doppelgängers are not causing anything. Maybe they’re just omens. In Norse mythology, you find that concept presented in a couple of ways, but basically seeing a person’s double is a form of premonition, sometimes even a warning.”

“Okay.” Stiles sounded a bit doubtful. “Let’s say that the doppelgängers are actually harmless warnings. Means that we’re back to square one, though. We have no idea what’s going on.”

He sounded frustrated. Sam sympathized with the sentiment, as it was his job to solve that kind of problem and he hated feeling inadequately armed to do it, both because of his physical and mental state, and because of the absence of his brother. It was odd that _Stiles_ felt like he had to solve it too. He’d said he wasn’t a hunter, but he kind of thought like one, if you ignored the part where he was friends with werewolves. 

Sam turned his head on his pillow to look at Stiles, and gasped at the sight that welcomed him: the boy was on his bed, like Sam had expected him to be, lying on his back with his face turned to the ceiling, dead eyes wide open. Blood stained his entire front, some of it dripping to the floor along the hand that was dangling from the side of the bed.

“Stiles!” Sam sat up with a jolt, his aches and weariness forgotten for a moment. “What—”

“Sam? What’s wrong?”

Sam blinked a few times, until the sight of Stiles’ dead body disappeared, leaving in its stead a living Stiles sitting on the edge of his bed, looking at Sam with worried eyes.

“Nothing,” Sam managed to squeak out. His heart was still pounding hard but he could feel it slowing down already. “I thought I saw—but it’s fine.”

“They’re really bad, right? The hallucinations. You can’t tell them apart from reality.”

When Sam looked at him it wasn’t pity that he saw in the teenager’s eyes, like he’d expected, but rather something that looked like understanding.

“Me and two of my friends,” Stiles said, unprompted, “we did some kind of ritual a while ago, and, ah. As a side effect I had some pretty vivid dreams and hallucinations, to the point that I couldn’t tell whether I was awake or asleep. Lasted only a few days, though, but… It’s what made it possible for the nogitsune to possess me. So.” Stiles cleared his throat. “Is it what it’s like for you?”

While Stiles was talking Sam had had the time to compose himself, and he no longer felt like his heart was going to break out of his ribcage.

“I know I’m not asleep,” he said. “But I never know if what I see is real or not. And he’s always _there_ , whispering to my ear.”

Lucifer was sitting at the far end of his bed, one ankle resting on the top of his knee, looking delighted that Sam couldn’t help mentioning him, even in an oblique way.

“Like a devil on your shoulder,” Stiles said, and Sam’s stomach lurched at the terribly appropriate expression.

“I like this kid,” Lucifer commented cheerfully. 

“Exactly like that,” Sam said to Stiles.

“Who’s ‘he’, by the way?” Stiles asked. Sam didn’t know what kind of face he made at the question, but it had Stiles backpedaling immediately: “Sorry! Ignore the question, I just—my brain doesn’t always catch up to my mouth. I don’t need to know. You said he was just a residue, and—”

“He’s the Devil. I mean this literally.”

“Aw, Sam, you flatter me,” Lucifer said, pressing a hand on his chest.

Stiles gaped at him for a few seconds. “The Devil. You mean—”

“Lucifer.” The name felt like it burned Sam’s throat on its way out. Was he giving the Devil power by naming him?

“You’re joking. No, sorry, you’re not joking. How does—” Stiles vigorously waved his hands like he wanted to wipe out his words. “Okay, confession time is over. I totally regret asking. Damn, and I thought _I_ was fucked up.” 

They dropped that line of conversation, and the rest of the afternoon crawled at a snail’s pace. They were not let out again, and didn’t see anyone, save for being served dinner. They talked some more—Stiles didn’t seem to be able to help it—sometimes about trivial things, sometimes about what was going on in Eichen House, bouncing theories back and forth to each other. Stiles seemed to be used to doing this with someone else, and, even if a teenage boy was a poor substitute for his brother, Sam enjoyed having someone to debate a case with. Although he’d been in Eichen House for merely a day, it felt more and more like the outside world was dissolving into a dream.

As the day progressed and daylight started to dim, though, it became tough to maintain a conversation. There was a special kind of hell in wanting to sleep so badly that every cell in your body yearned for it, but being torn away from the edge every time. Lucifer was getting more creative in his hallucinations: for example, Sam was at some point violently awakened from his doze by Stiles strangling him. Lucifer maintained the hallucination only long enough for Sam to fully wake up, and Sam didn’t tell Stiles what he’d seen, but after that he couldn’t quite shake off his unease. He’d grown to like the kid, but the hallucinations, combined with the very real possibility that Stiles could turn on him, made being locked up in a room with him very awkward. 

Night fell, and the shadows in the room came alive with it. Sam was trying to remember the lyrics of some of Dean’s songs to distract himself from the agony of sleeplessness, when he heard Stiles gasp.

“Stiles?” Was the boy asleep? Maybe Sam should have been checking that he didn’t do that.

Stiles made a soft sound of distress, but then said, “I’m fine. Don’t—don’t let me fall asleep.”

“Okay,” Sam said, although he wasn’t sure how to do it when he was trying to sleep himself. “Were you dreaming?” he asked. Keeping him talking was probably the best option, even if it was about off-putting topics. “What did you see?”

“The nogitsune. He… I’m inside one of the school’s lockers, and he’s pounding on the door, yelling at me to let him in. He—” Stiles’ voice lowered to a thin thread. “He’s getting louder. I don’t know how much longer I can keep him out.”

It was dark enough in the room that Sam couldn’t see Stiles’ face, and he was glad for it. Stiles’ distress hit way too close to home.

“I understand what you’re going through,” he said. He hadn’t meant to say it, but he was too tired to hold the words in. “I remember what it’s like—I remember seeing my hands, hearing my voice, except it wasn’t _mine_ anymore, and I could see it all like through a pane of glass, like a prisoner in my own body.”

“You—” Stiles cleared his throat. “You were possessed? By, um—god I can’t believe I’m about to say this—by the Devil?”

There was no need denying it. “Yeah.”

“And that’s what it felt like for you?” Stiles didn’t wait for a reply before he went on, “Then you don’t—you don’t know what it was like for me. There was no pane of glass in my case—it was _my_ hands, and _my_ thoughts, and _my_ feelings. It was me who stabbed Scott, and got Coach shot with an arrow, and put a bomb at the station, where my _dad_ works. And the worst part is, I enjoyed the hell out of it. That’s how I remember it.”

Sam knew enough to be aware that there was nothing he could say that would make it easier on Stiles, no amount of reassuring the boy that it hadn’t been him, especially since they didn’t know each other that well.

“Your friends are looking for a way to help you, right?” he said instead. 

“Yeah. I know they’ll try their best, but…” Stiles’ voice contained that brand of nighttime despair that Sam knew well.

“My brother’s out there too, in Beacon Hills. Who knows, maybe they’ve met? Maybe they’re helping each other. My brother has faced the worst kind of odds.”

“That’s—”

Stiles cut himself off when new echoes came to disturb the quiet of the night. 

_…are you? where are…_

“Who the hell is up at that hour?” Stiles said.

_…where are you? …good boy…are you…_

Stiles snorted. “Sounds like someone is looking for their dog or something. Must be one of the patients—looks like you’re not the only one who knows how to pick a lock.”

“Yeah.”

_…come on…dobby…_

The forlorn murmurs were interrupted by a sharp, _Jordan! Get back to your room!_ An argument conducted in furious whispers ensued for a minute, and then silence once again fell down on the building like a drape.

“Jordan?” Stiles murmured thoughtfully. “He was at my group therapy thing. Looks chock-full of anger issues. What was he doing?”

Sam had nothing to answer to that question, because Lucifer had started to paint the walls with entrails.


	3. Chapter 3

The morning following his furry interlude, Dean received a visit. He’d gotten little sleep again and had merely lied in bed for long stretches of time, wondering what he should do about Beacon Hills and its werewolf population. 

Werewolves couldn’t help the monster in them. They could be the best, most kind-hearted person in the world the rest of the time, it didn’t change the fact that when moonlight struck all lights went out, leaving only a bloodthirsty monster who yearned to rip your heart off your chest. That was what they’d been taught—that was why Sam had had to kill Madison, an action that had haunted him for years. 

But then again, werewolves weren’t supposed to be able to change at will, and the ones he’d seen last night had done it. And, to think of it, Gordon Walker had been convinced that vampires were nothing but bloodthirsty monsters, and look at how _that_ had turned out. When someone knocked on the door Dean was brushing his teeth, still mulling all this over. 

“Who the fuck is this?” he mumbled after spitting into the sink.

Deaton was the only person who knew where he stayed and would have a reason to seek him out, but when Dean opened the door—holding a gun in the hand that was concealed behind it—he was faced with a man he’d never seen before.

“Hello,” the man said. “Are you Dean Winchester?”

He was a middle-aged man, maybe a few years older than Dean himself, with piercing blue eyes and salt-and-pepper stubble. 

“And who are you?” Dean asked, not relaxing his grip on his gun. He wasn’t Miss Manners by any means, but even to him it seemed like bad forms to ask questions without even introducing yourself.

“My name’s Chris Argent. I’m Allison’s father,” the man added with a pointed look that Dean couldn’t quite read. Did he think Dean had gotten fresh with his daughter, or what?

“Allison, yes. I remember. Wicked with a crossbow.” He hadn’t seen her actually use it, but he thought it was a safe bet. “To what do I owe the pleasure, Mr. Argent?”

“Can we talk inside?” Argent shot a look over Dean’s shoulder, then at the door that Dean was still holding between them like a shield. “Our conversation might alarm the neighbors.”

Dean snorted, but acknowledged that Argent was right and stepped back to let him come in. He made no attempt to hide that he had a gun in his hand, but he held his arm limp to his side so he wouldn’t look like he was threatening his visitor. Argent glanced dispassionately at the gun, but made no comment on it.

“Please, have a seat,” Dean gestured at the table with the hand that wasn’t holding a weapon.

Argent sat. Dean didn’t, preferring to remain standing. “Fine,” he said. “So, what’s up?”

“My daughter told me about what happened tonight.”

“Okay.” 

Dean was a little surprised, to be honest. He would have thought that being in cahoots with werewolves was something Allison kept from her werewolf-hunting dad, but then, maybe she hadn’t told daddy everything.

“You know who I am,” Argent said. 

“I know you’re a werewolf hunter, but that’s the extent of what I know, I’m afraid.”

“I know of you too.” Argent’s tone would be best described as neutral, but Dean tensed anyway. “Formidable hunter, from what I’ve heard. I actually met your old man once—he wouldn’t have mentioned me, it was really only in passing. I’ve also heard a lot of wild rumors about you and your brother.”

“Look, Argent,” Dean said, raising his gun-holding hand. “If you want to warn me to keep away from your daughter, you don’t need to strain yourself. I have no interest in her. If I was to concern myself with anything in this town, it would be with the company she keeps—but I have other things on my mind, right now.”

“You’re talking about Scott,” Argent said, the beginning of a scowl forming on his face. “He’s a good kid,” he added with obvious reluctance.

“It doesn’t really matter how good he is, you know that.”

“I know he’s a werewolf, if this is what you’re getting at. I can’t say I’m happy about it, but Scott isn’t dangerous. If he was, believe me, I would shoot him for even just breathing the same air as Allison.”

From the steely way he said it, Dean had no trouble believing him. He still felt complied to argue. “I don’t see how he’s not dangerous. He’s a _werewolf_.”

“How much do you know about werewolves?”

Dean bristled. “I’m not a fucking rookie.”

“I know you’re not, but werewolves have been the Argent family business for a very long time. Some of us still have trouble believing it, but some werewolves, particularly werewolves who are part of a pack, can control themselves and are no more dangerous than a human who’s well-versed in martial arts. Potentially lethal, yes, but not an out-of-control beast. I’m betting you only ever had to deal with werewolves who had no control over their wolf side.”

“Alright, maybe you know what you’re talking about,” Dean conceded. “Like I said, I didn’t come to Beacon Hills on a werewolf hunt.”

“Fair enough. But my daughter tells me you seem to know a lot about Stiles Stilinski.”

“The Sheriff’s kid?” 

Dean looked at Argent with new eyes: had he misread him? Was it possible that Argent hadn’t come out of concern for his daughter, but for that Stiles kid? 

“Stiles is an obnoxious little punk. But he’s Allison’s friend, and she’s had precious little of those in her life.”

“I know nothing about that kid but what I read in the paper, and that Scott is trying to save him. I’m guessing that whatever’s wrong with him is of a supernatural nature. Care to tell me what it’s all about? Is he missing again? I thought he’d come back home on his own.”

“He’s not missing, as far as I know. He committed himself to Eichen House, but—”

Dean went cold. “What did you just say?”

“Eichen House. It’s a psychiatric hospital that—”

“I know what it is! My _brother_ is there!” Dean slashed the air with his arm, and Argent shot his gun a wary look. Good—maybe that would give him some motivation to talk. “ _Tell_ me. What’s wrong with him?”

For a moment, Dean thought Argent wasn’t going to answer, but then he started telling Dean a story of magic trees and Japanese spirits, obscure rituals and possession. Dean listened to him in silence.

“Couldn’t you try an exorcism?” Dean asked once the man was done.

“Not with this kind of spirit, no.”

“You don’t look very convinced that this kid can be saved. Why did you come to me trying to warn me off him, then?”

Argent sighed, looking suddenly very tired. “I’ll do whatever needs to be done if it comes down to it. But my daughter… I told you, Stiles is her friend. She’s not ready to give up on him.”

Dean could sympathize with Allison Argent, and Scott McCall, and the rest of Stiles Stilinski’s friends and family. But all his thoughts were turned to his brother, and whether he was doing alright with an evil spirit potentially on the loose in Eichen House. He wouldn’t feel reassured until he was able to check on him.

\---

Daylight came like a saving grace. The night had been excruciating long, even worse than the one before, and after the mildly entertaining interlude of Jordan wandering around the hallways looking for god knows what, nothing else had come to break the boredom or distract Stiles from the all-consuming need to sleep. He’d pinched himself so often that his arms would probably end up peppered with bruises, but he could hear the nogitsune’s calls even at moments when he was quite sure that he was awake. He was coming at the end of his rope, and fast.

After a few new attempts at conversation, Sam had become silent, only letting out a few muffled whimpers and gasps from time to time. Stiles wondered what he was seeing, but it seemed like an intrusion to ask. When there was enough sunlight flowing into the room that Stiles could make out his roommate’s face, he saw that Sam looked almost translucent with exhaustion.

“Rough night?” Stiles asked in a voice that was quite rough itself. 

“You could say that,” Sam answered croakily. He sounded stronger than Stiles would have expected, though. The man must have been made of tough stuff.

After breakfast, their door didn’t get locked again and Stiles decided to aim for the basement one more time.

“What’s in the basement?” Sam asked.

He’d asked that question the day before, and Stiles had been evasive then, but this time he answered earnestly, “I don’t know.”

Sam hadn’t bothered sitting up for that conversation, but from his lying position he slanted a look in Stiles’ direction. “You don’t know. Why do you need to go there so badly, then?”

Stiles sighed, raking his fingers through his hair until it stood to attention. 

“I don’t know how the possessions you’re used to work,” he said. “But for me, it kind of happened progressively. I had black-outs, did things I didn’t remember doing—like ordering a hit on one of my friends—and one night I sleep-walked out of my room: what _I_ remember is waking up in a basement, my leg was caught in a bear trap, and he—” _Not who are_ you, Stiles. _Who are_ we? Stiles swallowed hard, feeling his heart flutter wildly in a way that evoked the beginning of a panic attack. “Anyway. I wasn’t in a basement, I was actually in the woods, nearly died of hypothermia there, but I—I think the basement I saw in my dream or hallucination or whatever was _Eichen House_ ’s basement, and, I don’t know, it has to _mean_ something.”

“Okay,” Sam said, then wiped a weary hand over his face. “I think I’ll stay here, though.”

“Yeah, I figured. That’s fine. I’m just gonna do a little bit of snooping around, see if I can find the door leading to the basement, and if I can get in there. I’ll be back before group therapy starts.”

After being in Eichen House for a couple of days, Stiles was starting to have a rough map of the institution in his head, and already knew where he wanted to head. He came across a few people on his way there, and it could have been his imagination, but he felt the same sort of tension in the doctors, orderlies, and patients alike. People were on edge, wary of each other and of what was hiding in the shadows, and it made Stiles nervous too. It wasn’t enough that he had to worry about what lurked in the corners of his mind, he now had to watch over his shoulder too. He regretted more than ever his decision to come to Eichen House—it seemed so stupid now that he could’ve thought for one second that he could be safe here. 

The hallways tended to all look identical to each other, white paint and wooden panels, interspersed by columns, but he still recognized it when he walked past Adam’s room. Without any conscious input from his brain, his footsteps slowed down until he stopped in front of the door. It was half-open, but Stiles couldn’t hear any sound coming from the inside of the room so he pushed the door and stepped in. The room was empty. The bed against the wall—the one Adam had stood on when he slit his throat—was devoid of beddings, leaving only a bare mattress, whereas the other bed had slightly rumpled sheets and blankets. Obviously, someone else was staying in the room. 

Stiles stepped closer to the bed, and saw a few spots of faded brown where the blood had soaked through the sheets and they hadn’t been able to wash it off. He swallowed, feeling faintly sick, and took a step back. Why had he come here—some kind of masochistic instinct? Morbid curiosity, maybe? Stiles shook his head and was about to leave the room when he heard something crunch under the sole of his shoe. Puzzled, he moved his foot away and bent over to pick up whatever it was.

It was a dead bug. It lay in the middle of Stiles’ palm, not doing anything—on account of, you know, being dead—and yet for some reason Stiles couldn’t stop staring at it. The bug triggered something—a feeling, the beginning of a thought or memory—at the back of mind that made his insides twist uneasily. 

“Hey, what’re you doing in here?”

A guy a few years older than him stood at the doorway, frowning at him.

“Oh, uh.”

“It’s my room.” The guy’s face hardened with hostility. He had a scar barring his cheek that made the expression very upsetting. “Did you come here to gawk?”

“What? No!” Well, he had, sort of. “I just, I got confused—I was looking for my room. I’ll be out of your hair. Sorry!”

The guy still looked a bit suspicious as Stiles left the room, but there were all sorts of confused people in Eichen House, so his story wasn’t completely out of the realm of possibility. He walked until he had turned around the corner, and then realized he still held the dead bug inside his closed fist. He opened his hand and threw it away, suddenly overcome by disgust, and wiped his hand over his sweatpants for good measure. 

It took him another minute to get a full grip on himself—he clenched his fists to stop his hands from shaking, fingernails digging into his palms, and tried to take a few deep breaths. The panic he felt was annoying, because he didn’t understand what had caused it and therefore couldn’t talk himself out of it. Once he had calmed down a bit, he regretted not having taken the time to talk to Adam’s roommate and ask him about Adam’s behavior before he’d tried to off himself, but then it would probably have made the guy even more suspicious. 

He started looking again for the basement with renewed motivation. At the end of a long corridor he finally found a door that, if his mind map could be trusted, would most certainly lead him there. When he tried the handle, though, he couldn’t get the door to open.

“Shit,” he said, giving the handle another pointless shake. 

Of course it was locked, Stiles, you moron. They wouldn’t leave it open for any patient to stumble into. Stiles lifted a hand to rub at his burning eyes, trying to get his thoughts in order. He needed to get the keys. Where could he get them? Would Morrell be willing to help him with it—as a favor to a dying boy, maybe?

He was startled out of his thoughts by the weight of a heavy hand dropping on his shoulder, and barely contained a yelp. 

“Did you get lost, boy?” It was Brunski, his breath hot against the side of Stiles’ face.

“Lost? No, I was just—touring. You know. Hey, what’s in there?”

“You’re a funny one, right? Some time in the quiet room will do you good.”

Stiles didn’t like the sound of this ‘quiet room’, not one bit, but he wasn’t exactly given a choice here. Brunski kept a hand on the back of his neck, while his other hand was locked around Stiles’ elbow, effectively keeping him under control. As they walked to wherever this quiet room was, Brunski waved for two other orderlies to come and help him. When Brunski unlocked a room and pushed Stiles in there, the other two orderlies each took hold of one of his arms. Stiles’ heart started to race.

The room was completely empty, and its walls and floors were covered in small, squared while tiles. It reminded Stiles of a swimming pool, except that the room didn’t smell like chlorine, but faintly like puke. 

“What’re you gonna do?” Stiles asked. He should probably shut up and try not to make it worse for himself, but it wasn’t something he was very good at. “I didn’t do anything! You can’t lock me in here—it’s probably unconstitutional or something. You—”

“You’re a talker,” Brunski commented, looking lazily amused. “You need to calm down, boy. I can help you with that.”

He got a syringe out of the breast pocket of his scrubs, and Stiles’ anxiety turned into full-blown panic. 

“Is that a sedative? Hang on, you can’t do that. I can’t go to sleep!”

Brunski tilted his head to give him a look. “Oh, really? That’s too bad. Hold him,” he said to the other orderlies.

The two men secured their grip on Stiles and that was when Stiles lost it: the men were both taller, stronger, and in a much better overall physical shape than him, but he still started struggling wildly, trying to make them let go of him, throwing his weight forward hard enough that he felt like his arms were almost yanked out of their sockets.

“You don’t understand! I can’t—ask Morrell, okay? She’ll tell you! I _can’t_ go to sleep!”

Frantically he tried to kick them in the legs, but in retaliation one of them twisted his arm behind his back and shoved him down on his knees. Stiles gasped out in pain but kept fighting them with increasing desperation, even as his arms burned and his knees throbbed. He was breathing too fast and his lungs felt tight and aching, his head spinning from the lack of oxygen. From his vantage point, Brunski contemplated him with barely concealed glee.

“Stop fighting,” he said, in a way that made it clear that he was actually very much enjoying the show. “You’re only hurting yourself.”

He approached with his syringe, and it only made Stiles fight harder against the weight holding him down. His vision had become hazy and his cheeks felt wet—shit, was he crying?

“No! Don’t, please, don’t! Don’t do this!”

The tears blurred his sight and he could barely see anything. He felt a sharp pinprick of pain on his arm, telling him he’d just been dosed, but the men kept holding him until his vision started to darken and his limbs started to feel heavy and disconnected. When they let him go, he couldn’t hold himself up and sagged over the cold tiled floor.

“You don’t get it,” he mumbled. His tongue felt like a dead piece of meat in his mouth. His hand clawed ineffectively at the floor tiles. “You don’t know what you’ve done…”

“Sweet dreams,” he heard Brunski say, followed by the sound of the door closing down.

In the back of his mind, he could hear the nogitsune rap against school locker doors.

\---

When Sam woke, it took him a moment to grasp the strangeness of the situation. He’d just _woken up_. Lucifer had allowed him a couple of minutes before, but he’d only ever brushed the edge of sleep before he was violently brought back to the waking world. This time, he couldn’t even say what had awakened him, and even though he still felt like shit and definitely needed a lot more sleep, he could tell the difference.

He looked around the room, his throat tight with hope, but his heart sunk when he saw Lucifer watching him from where he was sitting on Stiles’ bed.

“I thought you’d need the rest,” Lucifer said. “You’re welcome, by the way.”

“What—” Sam started to say, but a voice that wasn’t Lucifer interrupted him: “Sorry. Is it Stiles’ room?”

A girl was leaning against the doorframe, looking at Sam like she was anticipating an attack from him. She looked familiar, but it took Sam’s scrambled brain a few more seconds to remember who she was.

“Ah. Malia, right?” The girl who seemed to hate Stiles’ guts. “Stiles needed to do something—he’ll be back in a few.”

Him knowing her name didn’t seem to help her relax. If anything she tensed up even more, fingers clinging to the doorframe. “Stiles told you about me.”

She sounded like she was referring to more than just her name. Sam threw his legs off the bed and sat on the edge, trying to clear his thoughts. Something wasn’t quite right, but he couldn’t put his finger on it. 

“He only told me your name,” he said. “Do you want me to pass a message, or—”

“No,” she said. She was scowling, looking annoyed for some reason Sam couldn’t fathom. “It’s just that—I overheard Brunski and some of the other orderlies, and they were talking about Stiles and the quiet room, so I came to check, and—” She shrugged. “I don’t even know what I’m doing here.”

“What’s the quiet room?”

“It’s where they put agitated patients to let them cool down.” Malia bared her teeth in a way that looked disturbingly predatory. “They’ve tried it a few times on me.”

“Okay,” Sam said, threading his fingers through his hair. “Okay. What time is it?”

“I don’t have a watch.”

Sam didn’t have a watch either because they’d taken it from him, and it must have been the same for Malia, so that had been a stupid question. Sam’s feeling of wrongness was growing by the second, and he tried to tell himself that there was no reason to worry, because even though Stiles might not enjoy being locked up, it didn’t put him in any danger. Unless—

“You said it’s called the ‘quiet room’,” he said to Malia. She looked impatient, like she wanted him to make some kind of decision already. “Do they sedate the patients?”

“Yeah,” she said in a voice that clearly meant she thought he was stupid for asking. 

“Shit,” Sam said with fervor, already pushing himself off the bed. 

Lucifer had been quiet for the whole conversation—not a word, not even a measly hallucination—and had just sat there on Stiles’ bed, looking at Sam like he was recording his reactions. Sudden realization hit Sam like a brick wall.

“That’s why you let me sleep,” Sam said, shock making him speak out loud. “So I wouldn’t notice he was gone that long.”

“What?” Malia said. “Who’re you talking to?”

“No one,” said Sam as he walked to the door. “It’s nothing. Take me to this quiet room. We need to get Stiles out of there.”

He pushed past the girl, who was watching him with deep distrust. 

“Please,” he said, trying to convey all the earnestness he was capable of. He was off his game, and the fact that he behaved like a lunatic couldn’t inspire much trust, but eventually she sighed and took the lead.

“Thank you,” Sam said as he followed in her footsteps, doing his best to keep up with Malia’s energetic pace. “I know you don’t like him.”

The line of Malia’s shoulders went rigid. “He told you that? Well, it’s true, I don’t.” For a moment Sam thought this was all she had to say on the subject, but then she added, “He did save my life, though.”

She became quiet after that, and Sam needed all his energy to follow her so he didn’t try to get the conversation started again. Suddenly Malia grabbed his arm and dragged him behind a column, shoving a hand in front of his mouth so he wouldn’t cry out.

It wasn’t necessary, because Sam had seen the two orderlies walk past and he’d done enough sneaking around in his life to know how to muffle his reactions. He didn’t fight Malia’s grip and remained still as they huddled together to take as little space as possible. She felt too warm, like she had a fever, although she didn’t look sick, and she was much stronger than a girl her size had any right to be, even taking into account Sam’s weakened state. 

“The room is down that hallway,” Malia whispered once the orderlies were out of hearing range. “Third door on the left.”

“Okay,” Sam whispered back. “I’m going to need something to pick the lock, though. A paperclip, or—”

Malia let out a put-upon sigh. 

“Okay, I’ll open the door for you,” she said, as though giving in after a long argument.

Then, without a word of warning, she pushed away from Sam and left him to follow her. She slipped along the hallway, up to the door she’d pointed at, grabbed the handle, looked around, and, when Sam expected her to take out something to work on the lock, she merely gave the door a pull and the lock gave away with a snapping noise.

“I have good upper body strength,” she said in answer to the look Sam gave her. 

Sam glanced into the room, and decided any question he had about Malia could wait when he caught sight of Stiles lying down on the floor, unconscious. He dropped down to his knees and rolled the boy over. There was blood on the front of Stiles’ shirt and on the tiled floor, but not enough of it to be too alarming. A quick look-over allowed Sam to see that it was coming from deep scratches on the inside of his arm. The scratches looked self-inflicted, because there was also blood on Stiles’ hands and under his fingernails.

“Stiles, wake up!” Sam grabbed a shoulder and started to shake. “Come on, wake up, Stiles. Wake up!”

“What’s on the wall?” Sam heard Malia ask, and he turned around to check what she meant.

He now knew what the blood had been for: someone, whether Stiles himself or the nogitsune, had used it to write a word on the tiled surface: ATARI. Sam didn’t know what it meant, and he had more pressing matters to mind when he heard Stiles moan and felt him stir under his hand.

“Stiles? That’s it, kid, you have to wake up.”

Maybe it was the pull of Sam’s voice, but Stiles suddenly gasped and his eyes shot open, thrashing around like he was trying to defend himself against an attack. He almost socked Sam in the mouth, but Sam caught both of his wrists and held them until recognition flickered in Stiles’ eyes.

“Hey, hey,” he said, keeping his voice low not to draw unwanted attention. “It’s me, it’s Sam. You’re safe, you’re okay.”

He kept the soothing nonsense going until Stiles stopped fighting him and said, “Sam? What happened?”

“I think you were drugged—they put you to sleep.”

“Oh. Fucking Brunski. I was trying to open the basement door, and—” He lifted a hand to his face, probably to rub his eyes, but stopped himself when he saw the blood. “What the fuck—” He looked at his other, equally bloody hand, swallowed audibly, and raised his head—a slow, deliberate movement, like he already knew what was on the wall. “ _Atari_ ,” he read softly, rolling the _r_ in a distinctively foreign manner.

“What does it mean?” Sam asked. He was still holding the boy’s wrists and could feel the way his pulse raced. 

“It’s a Go term.” Stiles’ breathing was getting too loud and too fast. “It means—it means you’re about to die. How do I _know_ that? I’ve never played Go in my life! If you put me in front of a goban I wouldn’t know—oh god. _Oh god_.”

Stiles pushed Sam away and dropped to his hands and knees, chest heaving like air was in low supply and he had to strain to get enough of it. 

“Stiles?”

“I’m—shit—having—a panic attack.” Stiles squeezed his eyes shut. “ _Damn it_. I can’t—”

Malia had stepped back into the doorway like she was afraid Stiles’ condition might be contagious, so obviously it was up to Sam to calm the kid. He had some practice talking down panicked people—he was better at it than his brother, not that it was a high bar—but his mind was still fuzzy from the little sleep he’d gotten, and he was way too fucking tired for this. 

“Okay,” he said, turning to Stiles. The kid wasn’t being very noisy, fortunately, but the laborious, sucking breaths he was taking sounded painful. “Okay, Stiles, you listen to me. Listen to my voice, okay? Don’t think about anything else.”

“Like—about—fucking _fox spirit_ —using my body—to, to—”

“I said don’t think!” Stiles lifted his head to give Sam a withering look. “I know, I know, easier said than done. Right now you just need to breathe.”

“I’m— _trying!_ ”

“Breathe with me. In—do it with me, come on.” Stiles took a long, trembling breath. “Now out. Good, you’re doing fine. In. Out.”

It took a while, but eventually Stiles’ breathing settled down. The boy slumped against the wall opposite to the one that was painted in blood, still looking pale and shaky.

“Well, that’s always fun,” he mumbled, then said to Sam, “Thank you.”

“Don’t mention it.”

“Are you okay, now?” Malia asked brusquely, and Stiles blinked at her, like he was only registering her presence now. “Because either we leave you in here, or we all get out, but someone is bound to walk by and find us like this.”

“Yeah.” Stiles started to get up, then hissed and clasped his scratched forearm against his already stained t-shirt. “I’m okay—it just stings like hell. How did you get in, by the way? I’m guessing the door was locked.”

“I broke the door open,” Malia said.

“Oh.” Stiles shot Sam a worried look. “That’s, uh—thank god for shitty doors, right?”

He staggered out of the room and glanced left and right. The hallway was still silent and empty. 

“Okay,” he said. “You two can go back to your rooms or whatever.”

“Where are you going?” Sam asked. 

“The basement. I will get into that fucking basement even if it’s the last thing I do.” 

He started walking, and Sam followed. “You can’t wander around looking like you tried to slit your wrists,” he said. “And what if the basement is locked?”

Stiles stopped dead. “It is. That’s why I couldn’t get in.” He turned to Malia, who had lagged behind. “Malia,” he said, “would you open that basement door for me?”

Malia crossed her arms. “Fine,” she said. “But you need to help me too.”

“Yeah, okay, but—”

“You said you knew someone who could help me change. You know, when you were watching me take a shower?”

Stiles colored. “What? That’s not how—“ A sigh. “Okay, I remember that particular episode—although I want it to be noted that you were showering in the _boys’ room_ —but let’s talk about it later, okay?”

Stiles didn’t look in Sam’s direction as he talked, but Sam didn’t need it to know that he meant, _when the hunter isn’t listening_. Sam wanted to tell Stiles not to bother—Malia wasn’t especially subtle, and Sam had long come to the conclusion that she was one of Beacon Hills’ werewolves, but it was hard to care when he was so tired. Once they’d dealt with Stiles’ basement obsession he’d see what he had to do about it—hopefully after getting some more sleep. 

“Basement it is, then,” he said. 

From where he was standing, he could still see inside the quiet room the part of the wall where Stiles—or rather, the nogistune—had written. He tried to ignore the way the bloody lines twisted like snakes until they formed the words _‘chaos, strife and pain’._

\---

The basement was dark, cold, damp, with pipes running along the walls and up to the ceiling, and junk piled up in the corners: bags, boxes, rusty equipment of an unidentified nature, even an old wheelchair. It was, frighteningly enough, exactly as Stiles remembered it. He swallowed hard, fighting the mounting panic that threatened to choke him. He didn’t have the time to go through this again.

“What’re we looking for?” Sam asked.

He looked twitchy, but Stiles had no energy left to worry. As long as the man was functional, it would have to do.

“What’s this?” Malia asked, pointing at the back wall.

The light raining on them from the little square openings on the ceiling was enough for Stiles to see the symbol carved on the cement surface: it looked like a mirror image of the number 5. Stiles took a few careful breaths, a hand pressed against his chest. He could feel it vibrate with the way his heart hammered against his ribs.

“Does it mean anything to you?” Sam asked. He was standing a little closer to Stiles than he’d thought, and Stiles had to contain his start.

“Yeah,” Stiles said. “It means ‘self.’”

“Is it something _you_ know or something _he_ knows?” Sam asked pointedly.

Malia was a little further, snooping curiously around the basement, but if her hearing was anything like Scott’s she’d probably heard Sam anyway. It was likely she didn’t care, though.

“It’s something I’ve been told,” Stiles said.

He couldn’t stop staring at the carved symbol: it was formed of multiple, deeply furrowed lines, like someone had taken painstaking care to draw it over and over again with some kind of tool. Its familiarity made Stiles feel nauseous. 

_Let me in._ Stiles’ whole body tensed, his muscles going rock hard, but he managed to keep it together.

“I was being overdramatic earlier,” he said to Sam absently. “ _Atari_ means imminent capture; it means you’ll be captured in the next move. But you still have a move left to escape your fate. It’s not hopeless. Now we just need—”

“Hey, did you hear this?” Malia asked. 

She was looking up, eyeing the pipes with suspicion. Stiles hadn’t heard anything, but he trusted Malia’s sharper senses.

“What did it sound like?” he asked her.

“It was a sort of— _hissing_ , and—” She turned her head, seemingly following whatever she was hearing. “Like something’s slithering.” She wrinkled her nose. “Something smells wrong, too.”

It was the only warning they got before one of the pipes burst at the seams. Stiles jumped back with a yelp to avoid being knocked down by a segment of heavy pipe.

“What the fuck!”

Something shot out of the dangling pipe, fast as an arrow, and for a moment Stiles thought he was dreaming again, until he heard Malia’s animal growl of fear.

“What’s that thing doing here?” she bit out, her voice rough as though human words were coming to her with difficulty.

The _thing_ looked like a snake at first glance—which was surprising enough by itself. It had a long and dark rope-like body, with a white spot on the head like a diadem, but it didn’t move like a snake: instead of wriggling it stood upward, like a bear walking on its hind legs. It didn’t look big enough to have broken the pipe, so Stiles shot a wary look at the entanglement of pipes over their heads, then took a step in direction of the snake-like thing.

“What—” he started to say, but Malia grabbed his arm and yanked him back.

“Ow,” Stiles complained—she’d taken hold of his injured arm and he felt a fresh burn of pain shoot through it.

“Are you a moron?” she yelled. “Do you want to die? Don’t touch it!”

The snake thing whipped a pointy head toward them, opened its mouth, and let out a hiss that made every single hair on Stiles’ body stand. Malia growled again, crouching like she was about to get on all four.

“A basilisk!” Sam exclaimed, snapping his fingers, like he’d been looking for the name and it had just come back to him.

“A basilisk? Like in Harry Potter?”

“It’s the king of snakes, can kill or paralyze with a look—don’t meet its eyes!”

“Okay, okay.” Stiles took another step back, feeling some Malia and Sam’s fear infect his mind in spite of himself. Malia still had a hold on his arm, her fingers digging into his flesh, but the pain felt grounding so he didn’t ask her to let go of him. “Paralyze, you said? Could it be the thing that attacked the girl and the orderly?”

“Possibly.”

The basilisk launched itself forward and they all shuffled back hurriedly to get out of its range. It was quite a feat, trying to keep tracks of the thing’s movements while avoiding its eyes, and it gave Stiles the unpleasant sensation that they were just delaying the inevitable. The basilisk didn’t look like it was trying all that hard to get to them, but more like it was toying with them. It hissed again, making Stiles’ ears ring and drawing a whimper from Malia.

“How do we get rid of it?” Stiles asked Sam, but when he looked in his direction his heart sunk at the man’s telltale glazed-over eyes. “Sam? Hey, Sam—come on, man, we don’t have time for this!”

Stiles kept trying to get to Sam while his mind was working as fast as it could. The basilisk was leaving a dark trail behind itself, like its passage was scorching the cement floor. Sam had said the basilisk’s look could kill, but could it be oozing poison too? That meant they wouldn’t be able to wrestle with it or anything, not that Stiles had been eager to try. They needed to get to the door—but the basilisk was between them and the doorway, and even though it wasn’t attacking them right now, it was probably too much to hope that it would just let them go. Even then, if they just went and locked it in the basement it would only need to get into the pipes again and then it would be free to keep preying on the hospital’s occupants. No one had died so far—not from the basilisk at least—but eventually someone would run out of luck, and—

“Can you see this?” Sam asked suddenly, sounding dazed. 

“The evil snake thing that can kill us with a look, according to you?” Stiles said with all the flippancy he could muster at the moment. “Yes, we can all see it.”

“No, I mean—Dean. Dean, _no_.”

Stiles didn’t know who Dean was, but obviously Sam wasn’t very sane right now, although at least he was communicating again. _LET ME IN!_ Not that Stiles was in the position to throw stones about anyone’s mental stability, of course.

“What’s wrong with him?” Malia snapped impatiently. She released Stiles’ arm; he felt very vulnerable all of a sudden. “We should leave him behind, and—”

Stiles hadn’t known Malia for long, but he could read her posture and the look on her face nonetheless. She was obviously still afraid, but at the falsely relaxed, but still intent way she held herself Stiles could see that in the fight-or-flight dilemma, she’d decided to opt for fight.

“Malia, uh, I don’t think you should attack that thing head on…”

Not that fleeing was much of an option either: trying to stay away from the snake, they’d gotten themselves backed against the wall where the symbol was written. Still, given what the basilisk was doing to the floor, Malia definitely shouldn’t try to touch it. Stiles looked around for something they could use as a weapon. There were only a few boxes, not quite in his reach. The wheelchair was a little further away, but to get to it he would have to step closer to the basilisk than he felt comfortable. 

“No,” Sam said, stopping Stiles’ train of thoughts. He sounded a bit more alert than before, but it worried Stiles to see him press a hand against his temple, like he needed it to keep the thoughts from leaking out. “The lore says—it says that the basilisk’s poison can run up any weapon that touches them, and kill the person that holds it. Even if you don’t touch it with your bare hands…”

Well, that was inconvenient for sure. “Malia, you definitely shouldn’t attack it.”

“Thank you, I heard.”

“But if we can get hold of something we can throw at it…”

It was the moment the basilisk decided it had waited long enough: it sprung from the floor like a Jack-in-the-box, aiming for Stiles, who jumped on one side while Sam and Malia jumped on the other. The basilisk flew barely a few inches away from Stiles’ face, and went to crash against the wall. The shock dazed it for a few seconds, and Stiles took advantage of that time to scramble as far from it as possible. He stumbled onto a piece of the pipe the basilisk had damaged, and thought about picking it up before he remembered Sam’s warning about the poison. 

“Try to find something to throw at it!” he yelled at the intention of his companions, while he frantically looked for exactly this. 

He dismissed the boxes out of hand—he didn’t have the time to assess their weight, and if they were too light they wouldn’t harm the basilisk, maybe only piss it off, and if they were too heavy he wouldn’t be able to throw them with enough accuracy. 

“Stiles, look out!”

Stiles ducked on instinct, and the basilisk shot over his head. The thing recovered quickly, springing again, and Stiles toppled a pile of boxes over to slow it down. The basilisk let out another of its blood-curdling hisses, and Stiles watched with horror the cardboard from the boxes blacken and melt, and the snake slither out of the decaying pile, coming for Stiles.

“What the hell!” Stiles yelled, throwing more boxes at it. “Why is it going after me?”

His shoulder blades hit the wall, and, just as Stiles contemplated his own death in the form of an erect snake spitting poison, the door to the basement flew open and someone came in, shouting, “Dobby!”

_What?_

The basilisk froze, and turned its triangular little head—Stiles was only now noticing that it seemed to have a _beak_ —toward the newcomer, who was saying, “Dobby, I found you!”

“Dobby,” Stiles repeated, dumbfounded. Now that it looked like he wasn’t going to die just that minute, the adrenaline ebb left him feeling unsteady and exhausted once again. His knees wobbled a little, and he pressed back against the wall to hold himself up. “Dobby, as in—oh my god, as in _Harry Potter_. But Dobby’s the house elf, right, not the—”

“Stiles,” Sam interrupted him, his voice tight. “I don’t think this is what you should focus on right now.”

“You.” The person talking—the one who’d just barged in and addressed the basilisk as though it was a fucking pet—was Jordan. Stiles was somehow very much unsurprised. “It’s _you_ ,” Jordan said accusingly to Stiles, who felt it was unfair of Jordan to steal his line.

“Me? Um, yeah, I’m me. I mean, most of the time.”

“Your _voice_ in my _head_.”

Stiles was suddenly reminded that he was talking to a crazy person—Jordan’s hair was wild as a bird’s nest, and his eyes were wide open, intense. The basilisk hadn’t moved since Jordan had come in, like it was waiting for instructions. 

“What do you mean,” Stiles said, his mouth very dry. From the corner of his eye he saw Malia move closer to Jordan, positioning herself at one of his blind spots. 

“I keep hearing you, all the time, telling me—I just can’t keep your voice out of my head!” As he was talking, Jordan grabbed a fistful of his hair and tugged at it hard enough that it made Stiles wince. Jordan coughed, then asked, an edge of desperation in his voice, “Why can’t you just stop?”

“I’m not—” The tips of Stiles’ fingers felt like ice, and his chest ached deeply in an unfortunately familiar way. _I’m doing it just as you told me_. “I’m not doing anything—I’m not. It’s not me.”

“I’ll make you stop.” Jordan coughed again, the kind of cough that someone did when they had something stuck in their throat. “I’ve found Dobby now—I’ll make him make _you_ stop.”

“Hey, kid,” Sam said. He advanced toward Jordan, hands put out with his palms open. He looked a little wild himself, still not all there, but that didn’t stop him from taking another step in direction of the crazy guy with the deadly snake. “Just stop for a moment, okay. Let’s talk.”

“I don’t want to talk! I’m tired of talking.”

“I know, I know—I get it, believe me. Just tell us what you mean, okay? What do you have against Stiles?”

“Stiles?” Jordan’s coughing started up again, getting worse until he spit something into the palm of his hand. It was hard to say from where he stood, but it looked to Stiles like a dead bug. “He’s not Stiles anymore,” Jordan croaked. 

Stiles’ heart skipped a beat. “What do you—” he started, but then, in a darkened corner of the basement, half-hidden behind a pile of boxes, Stiles saw _him._

“Stiles?” This was Sam, but Stiles couldn’t focus on anything but the nogitsune’s slow approach.

“Oh god,” he said. “ _You_.” The nogitsune let a bandaged hand run along the wall as he came, shredding cobwebs on his way. “You got into his head. Adam’s, too.”

“Every Dracula needs a Renfield,” said the nogitsune in his mangled voice. He sounded like a creaky door in a dusty attic covered with spider webs.

“Why are you doing this?” Stiles asked plaintively, sounding pathetic even to himself. 

He was sweating so much he might as well have had a bucket of water thrown to his face, and what little strength he had left seemed to drain with the sweat. He wanted to run, but there was nowhere he could go, nowhere he could be safe from the infection in his mind. The perspiration made the scratches on his forearm sting, and he had a sudden flash of digging his own nails into it until he drew blood.

“You know what I want,” the nogitsune rasped. 

Malia chose that moment to jump on Jordan, and the basilisk reacted at once, leaping at her before Stiles had the time to finish yelling, “Malia, _no!_ ”

Malia growled in pain at the basilisk’s touch, tried clumsily to flip it off her, then to stand up, but she didn’t get far before she fell over her face. Then she didn’t move anymore.

“Malia!” His back still against the wall, Stiles realized he had slid down until he was sitting on the floor. He couldn’t get back up, couldn’t move, as surely as if he’d been restrained. “Sam? Sam! Help Malia!”

Jordan had picked himself up and was cooing at the basilisk, “Good boy, that’s a good boy. You did good, Dobby, oh yes, you did.” He never tried to touch it, though.

“Sam!” Stiles called again, searching with his eyes around the dark basement for the man. “Sam—”

“He cannot answer you,” the nogitsune, and that was when Stiles caught sight of Sam facing another of the walls, steadily hitting his head against the hard cement surface. Stiles could see some blood already running down his face.

“What—”

“We can save them, you know,” the nogitsune said conversationally. He was so close now that Stiles could see the awful details of his blackened lips and rotten teeth. “We can heal the coyote girl from the basilisk’s poison. We can purge the hunter’s mind from the evil driving him insane. If you _let me in_.”

Stiles tried again to get up, to fight the gravity that was keeping him down. If he could get up, he would—Would do what, exactly? His arms felt like wet noodles, and his legs could as well have been two pieces of woods for all the good they did him. He was so, _so_ tired he wanted to cry, but felt too dried up inside for it. He had no strength left at all, but even if he did, running wouldn’t help him escape the nogitsune, and Malia and Sam would still die.

“Let me in, Stiles.” It was only a whisper, but the nogitsune’s voice sounded louder than a honking horn to Stiles’ ears. “Let me in. Let me in.”

Stiles closed his eyes, wishing for oblivion. The last thing he consciously heard was Jordan screaming the name of his pet basilisk. 

\---

“How’s your brother?” was Deaton’s first question when Dean walked inside the animal clinic.

The veterinarian stood in the doorway that led through the examination room—glancing over the man’s shoulder, Dean could see Scott with Allison, Kira, and Lydia—he’d been told that it was the red head’s name—in the middle of debating about something. Argent was conspicuously absent, and Dean wondered if he was out there hunting for Stiles Stilinski. Nasty job, to have to take out a kid, but Argent looked like the kind of hunter who would do what needed to be done. Dean had been about to go to Eichen House to check on Sam—well, in truth, he’d gone there to forcefully remove him from that place—when a woman named Morrell had called, telling him to come and get his brother. The woman had sounded grim and Dean had feared the worst for a moment, until he’d understood that the grimness was intended for the kid.

“He’s sleeping it off,” Dean answered Deaton. “He’s pretty exhausted.”

Inside the examination room, Scott turned to the sound of Dean’s voice and gave him a small nod of acknowledgement. He looked tired, but determined.

“He’ll probably be out for a while,” Deaton said. “Did he talk to you about what happened? Have the hallucinations stopped?”

“He’s not seeing— _him_ anymore, so it looks like it’s over.” Dean could barely believe it, but Sam had sounded pretty convinced, and he would know the difference better than Dean. “He was pretty out of it, but from what I gathered he thinks that the Stilinski kid healed him.”

“Hmm.” Deaton rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “Stiles doesn’t have that kind of power. But the nogitsune does.”

Dean had had that thought already, but it didn’t make sense to him. “Why would an evil spirit suddenly decide to cure my brother? Why would that even matter to it?”

“It wouldn’t—but maybe it would matter to Stiles. There were other people in that basement with Stiles and your brother. I couldn’t get Jordan Hughes to make sense—he seemed to be mostly preoccupied by the dead basilisk we also found there.” Deaton must have caught on Dean’s alarm, because he added, “We’ve taken care of it; you don’t need to concern yourself about it.”

Dean wondered who was that _we_ , but figured they were on Deaton’s turf and that it was none of his business. After all, a _dead_ basilisk meant that there was nothing left for him to do. 

“Okay,” he said. “Who else was there?”

“I talked to Malia Tate, and she said that she’d been poisoned, but she’s now perfectly fine. Now, Malia has… a particularly resilient constitution. But it still seems unlikely that she could have survived a direct touch to a basilisk without a little extra help. The nogitsune would have little incentive to help Malia or your brother, but maybe he was influenced by Stiles, or did it as a favor to him.”

“A little _thank you_ gift for letting it take over his body,” Dean said with a derisive snort. “That’s nice. Well, can’t say I want to argue with the results.”

Over Deaton’s shoulder, he saw Scott come up to them. “We’re going to save Stiles,” Scott said, earnest conviction shining through. “We found information in the scroll we got from Katashi’s finger that helps, so I know we can do it. We just need to find him.”

Dean wanted to say _good luck with that_ , and take his brother far away from Beacon Hills to let him recover somewhere quiet and safe. But he remembered Sam grabbing his wrist, half asleep but intent on passing his message: _That kid_ saved _me, Dean_. He hadn’t seen how it was possible at the time, but discussing it with Deaton had him admit that it was probably true. Besides, werewolf or not, he was very sympathetic to the way Scott must be feeling right now.

“I’ll help you find him,” he said, decision made. Sam would’ve helped himself if he had been in the right shape for it. “I’ll help you save your friend.”

He’d thought that it was what Scott had been angling for but Scott’s face registered surprise at Dean’s words, then delight. “Thank you,” he said fervently. 

“Don’t thank me yet. We haven’t found him.”

“We will. I know we will.”

“Well.” Dean wasn’t sure he remembered ever being that young. “If you’re sure, then. We just need to get to it.”

This wasn’t even close to the most hopeless crusade he’d been on, and Scott’s optimism was contagious. Dean figured that he’d just have to stay in Beacon Hills a little longer.

**Author's Note:**

> I know that this is quite an open ending, but I figured that from that point things would go pretty similarly to the end of TW's season 3 (except that, in my mind, Dean's involvement means that somehow Allison doesn't die!). Hope you enjoyed this self-indulgent crossover!


End file.
